RAILWAY INFORMATION MANAGEMENT
The content management platform enables Belgian railways to meet stringent safety regulations and manage complex business processes through the central management of documents and information
Photo by: Duane Daws
State-owned Belgian Railways has been implementing an enterprise content man-agement system to improve its performance and the cost efficiency of its operations, says Belgian Railways project manager Stephane Haelterman.
The company manages the transport of 200-million people and 60-million tons a year of freight, as well as the associated train maintenance and workshops. It also manages large and diverse parts of the rail value chain, including component design, customer service and safety measures.
Poor information management contributed to some components not meeting the latest standards set out by Belgian regulators, main-tenance at workshops being negatively affected and delayed and customer services also being poor, owing to poor communication and information.
“However, with our integrated information system, our 340 engineers – who produce about one-million technical drawings a year of components based on regulations – and our workshops employees, train conductors and customer service staff always have access to the latest information. This has led to a reduction in delays and waste at workshops, as fewer com-ponents are manufactured based on incorrect or dated standards.
“We also improved our customer services, as there is significantly less delay in finding the correct information and communicating this to customers.”
The company had legacy databases and custom-made applications that it had to include in any new system. Belgian Railways uses a combination of enterprise resource planning giant SAP tools and enterprise information software Open Text to combine its in-house information and document processes, legacy databases and custom-made applications. This enables more insight to be generated by analysing the confluence of data and better access to information by all its various divisions.
The content management platform is currently a strategic part of the State-owned business, which enables it to meet stringent safety regulations and manage its complex business processes through the central management of documents and information to its more than 21 000 employees, emphasises Haelterman.
Further, Open Text enterprise content manage-ment enabled the company to bring unstructured content, such as documents and drawings, into its core business processes. New information can enter the system, which is then used to inform relevant company departments of any changes.
“We compete with private companies and other European entities and we could not compete effectively using our old document management system, where sourcing information took a long time and you could not be sure whether it was correct and up to date,” says Haelterman.
The new system is successful and new unstruc-tured data is being well managed. It also enables good vendor-invoice management and the modelling of business processes.
“This information and document management system is part of our governance-driven project and process optimisation, which includes our adherence to legal regulations and standards governing maintenance, scheduling and planning, besides others.”
Persistent and consistent change management is crucial for a State-owned enterprise, as it enables the organisation to move from an inflexible and unconnected information man-agement system to a central one that improves efficiencies. Such a system also enables an organ-isation to meet its regulatory obligations and manage all the interrelated work processes, con-cludes Haelterman.