The idea behind this project was to establish an Integrated Train Enquiry
System, which would replace all discrete railway telephonic enquiries
functioning over various railway divisions and stations. The ITES would provide
a global enquiry that can give same information across the country.
Earlier Indian Railways was operating numerous telephonic enquiries all over
the country which were manned by railway staff. These enquiries provided limited
information pertaining to stations under their jurisdiction. Also face-to-face
inquiries were not very user-friendly when it comes to status of arrival and
departure of trains through stations under their jurisdiction.
Q What new services we can expect with 139 in future ? Q Plz comment on the innovation used in the project 139 ? QWhat were the challenges you faced in implementing the project ? |
The project provided an integrated railway inquiry all over the country
through a unique number (139) which is a category-I code as defined by DoT and
is accessible from anywhere on all landline/mobile/WLL phones irrespective of
TSP, without dialing the STD code. Both manual and IVRS enquiries of this
enquiry system obtain information online from the already existing computerized
National Train Enquiry system and Passenger Reservation System of Indian
railways. For IVR railways choose Nortel CS-1000 exchange with Nortel MPS 1000
IVR solution and it has been integrated with Oracle/Sybase databases and
back-end PRS and NTES application using Nortel development platform.
Railways faced various challenges in implementation of this project, first a
paradigm shift was needed in the mindset of railway users who were until then
accustomed to the traditional manual face to face enquiry only. Another
challenge was smooth migration to IVR through the global number 139 in a phased
manner. Also railways had to provide training to 2000 agents of Railway Enquiry
franchisees to handle manual queries at the call center. Technically, the
biggest challenge for railways was synchronisation of NTES (National train
enquiry system) data at four locations in the country and replication of Sybase
platform to Oracle database of ITES.
Company Scenario |
Before Deployment |
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After Deployment |
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Implementation Partner |
Kapil Puri and Dilip Modi, Bharat BPO |
The setup is currently handling around 6 lakh calls per day and is capable of
handling upto 20 lakh calls per day and Railways claims that the system is
capable of handling a daily call volume of upto 20 lakhs. Under this project,
Indian Railways has also started dial-a-ticket services to help people buy rail
tickets on the move. Recently, allotment of short code 139 for SMS services and
opening of the same by all telecom services providers has been done. SMS
services started on all telecom services providers except Reliance and BSNL.
Railways has also developed 'Knowledge Bank' at each RCC to help agents cope up
with data related to various incidents / situations / happenings to answer its
callers in an optimal way.
With this project a major business benefit to Railways has been in the form
of cost saving and gainful deployment of enquiry staff rendered surplus as a
result of closure of manual enquiries.
While social impact that 139 will have is quite obvious, many of you might be
wondering why it has been awarded in the Ingenuity Category. Well this is
because the jury liked the innovation done by railways in the business model of
139. Indian Railways has outsourced to Bharat BPO and a significant part of the
latters earnings comes by sharing revenues with TSPs on incoming calls for 139.
It is not a toll free number as of now, but there have been talks that the new
Railways minister might make it toll free. Wonder what innovations will happen
then? Maybe will see a different business model emerge!