Delivering Translink’s Modern Data Platform

Translink is Northern Ireland’s public transport provider, and is responsible for over 81 million bus and rail passenger journeys each year.

Translink’s mission is to deliver transformation in public transport by providing integrated services which connect people, enhance the economy & improve the environment.

Challenge

Transformative Change

The transportation industry has experienced transformative change within the area of data in recent times, with the introduction of on-board sensors, data collection points, vehicle location, ticketing, fare collection, and scheduling management systems. Translink, with its vision ‘To be your first choice for travel in Northern Ireland’, wanted to gain maximum value from the huge amounts of data captured from these different sources.

Version 1 was engaged to find a way of quickly transforming raw data into information that would be useful to Translink staff and customers.

Solution

Delivering a Data Solution

Version 1’s Data and Analytics team worked quickly and collaboratively with Translink to deliver a solution to help Translink achieve their business goals, developing a centralised data repository using Microsoft’s technology stack.

The solution, completed within 10 weeks, gave Translink a single source of truth in the form of a Data Warehouse. This allows reporting to be removed from Translink’s line of business systems; a future-proof, robust, and scalable on-premise Business Intelligence solution; personal, team, and organisations level reports, KPIs, and dashboards. The solution is also Cloud-ready and can be readily migrated to Microsoft’s Azure platform.

The Version 1 team implemented a robust ETL (extracts, transforms, and loads data) using SQL server integration services. The ETL connects with a multitude of data sources across the different technologies that exist in Translink’s data landscape. Configuration of Microsoft’s Power BI tool allowed connecting to over 70 data sources, to help simplify data prep and drive ad hoc analysis.

Real Differences…

…Delivered.

Translink’s data is now accessible, meaningful, and usable across its different data systems and all data is of much-improved quality.

Translink now has access to reports that are consumed on the web and mobile devices. Staff can create personalised dashboards with a unique 360-degree view of their organisation, helping inspire better-informed decision making.

Translink can now operate more efficiently – with Version 1’s solution providing a 95% reduction in data report preparation time.