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From coins, notes and cash … to tokens and paper tickets … to magnetic strips and fare media … to contact-less smart cards… and even as we speak, lots of advances in Near field communication (NFC) enabled smart phones, EMV (Europay, MasterCard, Visa) bank cards, iBeacon & Bluetooth Smart.
A move from cash to smart card and open payments platform in an account’s based ticketing approach is evidenced globally.
At SAP with an advanced ticketing platform using the SAP BRIM (Billing and Revenue Management solution) – which has been proven for more than 15 years in the telecommunication industry – for such use cases as usages of recurring services as SMS and voice mail, toll collects in a congestion reduction schemes in cities, etc… is being adopted and used in the travel industry in a unique approach; by solving challenges in a totally new paradigm shift where the ticket is no more just a paper print or even an isolated top-up card – but rather part of the service that the travel company provides to its traveler, in a seamless accounts based ticketing which is ready for the 21st century traveler.
In below video: How BRIM does actually help in various services based industries:
In video, the usage of the service (the travel as it pertains to this blogs topic) could be provided to the traveler in a contracts account setting (an accounts based ticketing system), where the recurrent components of the usage (the travel) can be done seamlessly with SAP BRIM Solution.
Passenger transport and public transit companies are also being affected by the 'services' based industry paradigm shift and they have to adopt to changes in business models and advances in technology
On the business models side, if we start with the urban city center and the public transit authority; we see that interoperability, especially between different modes of travel, sometimes provided by different entities as key – not only within the urban setting but also across regional commuter links, and long distance travels which raises the question of multimodality.
Taking only the urban setting, and from the end users perspective, the core transit service is being supplemented with parking, biking or car sharing schemes provided by either the transit company and/or by service providers in the city. These are services directly related to travel. In addition to this, what the city has to offer from a services perspective, services that can be used alongside a travel card, like a park (or a zoo ticket), day passes to a museum, events related to concerts, a library service, etc… are what end users aspire to have without the hassle to buy multiple tickets and signing up with multiple service providers.
This is becoming the expectation of the traveler.
On the technology side, the ubiquitous presence of the mobile phone, as well as the need to support other channels like the vending machine, the front office sales via the cash desk and the internet have made it paramount that fare management systems of yesteryear need to adapt to the current demands of the multichannel ticketing processes including validations.
What SAP provides in support of the current and future needs of smart ticketing is a unique platform, with innovation and flexibility, a unified end-to-end technology from sales & validation to financials posting & recognition and providing for the traveler an experience in consuming this travel and related services in a seamless fashion.
On flexibility and innovation: the ability to deploy both your latest ticket products and combination of your ticket products and other services in an easy to use, configuration based deployment without any additional coding;
On the Technology: In helping you transition from a proprietary and bespoke system into a real-time, and out the box integration to SAP’s world leading financial systems; and
The customer experience: instead of focusing on the front end POS system only to a system where you have complete visibility in what some industries call the ‘order to cash process’ – which is an account based system to manage a smart ticketing platform.
And all these, in a modular approach where you can road map your solution requirements and work with us to provide the right components that pertain to your strategy.
To learn more on this and how SAP could support you in your needs for ticketing, fare and revenue management, we invite you to join us in our upcoming International SAP Conference for Travel and Transport in Sinsheim, Germany on April 2/3, 2014.
