To remain competitive and drive growth in today’s consumer-centric digital world, a modern and seamless customer experience needs to be at the heart of every organization’s operation. The travel sector is no exception – today’s hyper-connected travellers expect the convenience of fast and reliable self-service capabilities around the clock.
VIA Rail Canada has provided passenger rail service for nearly five decades and today operates over 400 trains per week, connecting more than 400 communities across Canada. Serving millions of travellers annually, VIA Rail’s ridership continues to increase, growing by close to 10% in the first half of 2024 compared to the same period in 2023. As part of a far-reaching modernization program aimed at reimagining the way Canadians travel, VIA Rail undertook the replacement of its reservation system with the main objective of enhancing the customer experience with an intuitive, more convenient and accessible booking process. To achieve this, the existing platform and related systems had to be completely replaced and integrated with ticket offices, travel industry partners, the VIA Preference loyalty program and other operations – all without risking a major disruption to passengers.
The path forward
To navigate its journey into a new era of digital services and ultimately bring its vision for a transformed reservation system to life, VIA Rail turned to the industry experts: CGI and Sqills, a subsidiary of Siemens Mobility.
Sqills is a market-leading Software as a Service (SaaS) provider to public transport operators around the world, and its proven S3 Passenger software product was chosen as the optimal solution for VIA Rail’s requirements. S3 Passenger is currently in use by 40 global rail operators, including France's national state-owned railway company SNCF, Sweden's SJ, the UK’s Rail Delivery Group, and Brightline in the US. Sqills’ state-of-the art S3 Passenger provides game-changing features that include: inventory management, flexible pricing options and self-service capabilities that allow passengers to rebook, cancel, refund, upgrade and add additional services before and after ticket purchases. And with S3 Passenger, all distribution channels are managed from a centralized back-end, empowering VIA Rail to tailor its services specifically to the needs of each target audience.
CGI is a proven leader in the systems integration and consulting space and offered VIA Rail deep industry expertise to tackle this large-scale project. CGI’s transport experts delivered the specialized expertise required to efficiently integrate features of the transformed reservation system into VIA Rail’s ecosystem. One of the key challenges was migrating data from the legacy booking system to the new ecosystem, while also ensuring integration with several key VIA Rail internal systems such as revenue and financial-management programs. S3 Passenger, coupled with CGI’s industry knowledge and expertise, proved to be a winning combination. The system provides a comprehensive and continually evolving serverless cloud platform to build, deploy and manage applications – meeting the critical need for high availability and agility across VIA Rail’s powerful new reservation system.
CGI and Sqills support VIA Rail to its digital destination
The project went live November 18, 2023, a few weeks ahead of December’s peak holiday-travel period. While the lead time to a peak travel season was short, VIA Rail managed the typically hectic travel period with zero downtime, successfully managing tens of thousands of customer bookings.
Flexibility and convenience are the S3 Passenger’s key features. For example, online seat selection when booking is easy and travellers can even make special service requests such as diet restrictions or mobility needs. Implementing a serverless cloud-based system that can rapidly adapt to change provides a new competitive edge from both a business and customer experience perspective. With a short time-to-market, VIA Rail can now seamlessly launch new services that cater to evolving market needs and expectations without the risk of costly service disruptions.
Given the significance of this pivotal project to VIA Rail’s modernization – and the competitive edge it now has with a truly modern digital customer experience – the CGI-Sqills project team was pleased to receive personal accolades from the company’s Board of Directors. And on the social media front, VIA Rail’s new reservation system is enjoying positive customer reviews for its convenience and self-service features.
The successful launch of our new reservation system was an extraordinarily complex, multi-year undertaking. It launched with minimal disruption to our passengers and is now an example of successful deployment of a new technological tool in Canada. The new reservation system isn’t just for today; it is a flexible tool, able to evolve to meet the changing needs of our passengers. We are entering a new era of travel, and this is just the beginning.
President & CEO of VIA Rail
Bringing together specialist teams from CGI, Sqills and VIA Rail for this unique journey
In bringing together specialist teams from CGI, Sqills and VIA Rail for this unique journey, at no time did the project teams feel that three individual companies were working on the project, according to CGI’s David Amend, CGI Portfolio/Program Manager for IT Professional Services, Retail and Banking industries. “We merged into one unified productive team that was clearly focused on solving issues and driving change together. The chemistry and close collaboration among project partners was a key to success on this highly complex engagement.”
Yann Gunther, Sqills’ VP of Customer Success in North America, notes that the project teams gained valuable insights to power success on future projects while supporting VIA Rail to its digital destination. “Sqills is proud to have contributed to VIA Rail delivering a more intuitive, flexible, convenient, and streamlined passenger experience. By utilising S3 Passenger, VIA Rail has the flexibility to adapt to the ever-evolving needs of its customers within a short time-to-market.”
About the teams
VIA Rail Canada’s mandate is to operate the national passenger rail service on behalf of the Government of Canada, and to provide a safe, accessible, efficient, reliable, sustainable, and environmentally responsible service that meets the needs of Canadian passengers. VIA Rail operates intercity trains connecting over 400 communities across Canada and ensuring rail transportation services to regional and remote communities. The Corporation safely transported over four million passengers in 2023 and has been awarded nine Safety Awards and three Environment Awards by the Railway Association of Canada. For more, visit our website.
Siemens Mobility continues to develop its software portfolio for digital intermodal and connected mobility solutions with strategic acquisitions like Sqills. In Canada, Siemens Mobility has been providing solutions to the transportation industry for more than 40 years, and today provides customers with full-service capabilities for the entire life cycle of their projects to help evolve our growing cities while supporting Canada’s sustainability goals.
Founded in 1976, CGI is one of the world's largest IT and business consulting firms. In the transportation sector, and more specifically the rail industry, CGI provides innovative solutions that optimize assets, enhance operations, and elevate passenger experiences globally. Learn more about CGI’s comprehensive transportation services at cgi.com.
