Bahrain Public Transport Company (BPTC) increases transport usage at competitive costs

CHALLENGE

INCREASE TRANSPORT USAGE AT COMPETITIVE COSTS

BPTC, like any public transport operator, needs to keep operational costs down and at the same increase public transport usage. In early 2018, the public transport usage was decreasing–attributed to two factors: punctuality and reliability.

Studies around the world have shown that passengers need assurance that buses will operate without last-minute cancelations (reliability) and will run on a timely basis(punctuality)–without which trust in public transport services is lost.

As a result, BPTC undertook a pilot programme to enhance parts of the public transport services. Although the reports provided by the systems gave access to both measures, To support the business, they made the decision to bring together all reporting under a single roof.

The business-specific systems were hosted with a private cloud provider. From a business perspective, the service provision was adequate with known fixed costs. However, from an IT perspective, there were concerns over backup/restore processes, visibility of security configurations and the length of time taken for tickets to be enacted. These factors together with the introduction cloud options in the region prompted a detailed review of public cloud providers. Early indications showed potential cost savings.

SOLUTION

Microsoft 365 for collaboration, Azure Cloud and Power BI for better service

BPTC uses many business-specific systems, back-office systems and productivity applications and tools. Business specific systems from multiple vendors are used to plan, operate, maintain, and track public transport vehicles. There are also systems for passenger ticketing, issue and complaints tracking as well as Microsoft Navision for Finance and HR. Microsoft 365 suite of applications are used for collaboration, reporting and general productivity.

IMPACT

Better services, higher transport usage rates, data security and 30% cost savings

PowerBI increased punctuality and reliability. Tracking data was a focal point for BPTC’s initial efforts–specifically to look at the punctuality and reliability. This data also gave them the detailed view of journey times, round-trip times, missed journeys, missed stops as well as busy and problem areas.

The passenger ticketing data was next on the list which gave detailed views of bus service usage –including at the journey, stop, day, and time of day levels.

These reports and analytic views are then used by planning and operational departments to find areas of improvement including bus timetables, service control, bus drivers and various operational processes.

As a result of these improvements, both punctuality and reliability improved significantly, and BPTC began seeing increasing trends in public transport usage. They are continuing their journey in adding other data sources, dashboards, reports, KPIs and trend analysis.  The pandemic in 2020 brought challenges to all businesses worldwide and BPTC was no different. Lockdowns required working from home, capture and monitoring of infection information, monitoring the health of drivers and frontline staff and replan of bus services. They were able reconfigure all this and more with relative ease thanks to collaboration features in Teams. However, reliance on external organisations for key processes showed a different view. The migration of key business systems to Azure was already in motion but was impacted by lockdowns in other organisations.

As a result, BPTC undertook tasks that were originally designated for consultants and system vendors such as walkthrough of different scenarios, understanding of Microsoft tools and finalising plans for testing and deployment. In addition, they completed the initial synchronisation of virtual machines and data. This synchronisation and the use of available Microsoft tools tested during lockdowns gave them confidence that the migration could be completed in an overnight process. The easing of lockdowns late in the summer of 2020 gave BPTC an opportunity to complete the migration. In total they migrated 23 virtual machines with minimal inputs from the system vendors. The entire process of migrating was completed within a 10-hour window with minimal impact to business users and bus services.

Final validations over the next few days confirmed that the migration was a success, which wouldn’t have been possible without the migration tools and online help. The resulting migration to cloud services gave BPTC access to previously unknown security configurations, backup/restore processes, testing of DR scenarios as well as the ability to reconfigure resources when needed. 

In the process, they also managed to save around 30% of annual costs. BPTC are continuing to utilise both Power BI and Azure cloud services to enhance the services provided to the rest of the business. In the short to medium term, they will be investigating two specific areas; automation of some key processes using Power Automate and use of premium per user services for Power BI.