Heard at the InformNorden conference 2009

Dec 14, 2009

The customer was in focus at this years InformNorden conference in Copenhagen, a yearly event for public transport authorities and related organizations to exchange knowledge and discuss trends and opportunities. This year's theme was "Time Is always now" with topics around travel information and smart card services.

Throughout the conference, the need for customer focus permeated many of the presentations. The moderator Magnus Arnström phrased it as "We are good engineers, but we need to think about the customers' demands". Movia's (Copenhagen PTA) Charlotte Kjaersgaard Nielsen presented Movia's efforts to attract customers through digital Marketing and while emphasizing organizational challenges she concluded that "Customers prefer personalized and customized information". (See Movia's website.)
Nicklas Marshall, VP Sales for the Danish train operator DSB S-train, emphasized the need for personalized communication with passengers and a focus to "add new value added services" as a means to "increase the value of time spent traveling", especially during the mere 14 minutes that the passenger spends in the train.

The participants were in agreement about the complexities of smart card implementations and the danger of a big bang approach. A lesson learnt was the need to move in small incremental steps. A related re-curring view was the need to choose IT systems that allows for flexibility in connecting with other systems. Said SL's (Stockholm PTA) Åke Lindström: "It is very important that systems have an open API". Johannes Sloth, former CEO of Movia stated the danger in "...believing that we are so special, so we need a a custom-built solution... This is a dangerous and costly approach".

Next year's conference will take place on June 9-11 and will be hosted by Straetó, the Reykjavik transit authority headed by Reynir Jonsson.