Metra Rail had a range of disparate legacy systems supporting its revenue accounting functions — an aging infrastructure platform and a manual ticketing system that accepted only cash or checks for payment. State of Illinois legislation mandated that Metra accept credit card payments for ticket purchases within a very short time frame.
Metra needed a reliable integration partner with deep domain expertise in the Public Transit space that could rapidly deploy the solution to meet legislative needs. This partner needed to implement a robust Business Intelligence (BI) solution to provide industry-specific analytics with transit KPIs.
AST’s successful track record of deploying ERP and ticketing solutions for other large transit agencies played a key role in Metra’s decisions to select AST as its strategic partner for this initiative. In addition to the Oracle suite of applications, AST’s ASTRA BI solution proved to be a strategic asset in satisfying the strict analytic and transit KPI requirements by automating the complex data consolidation and helping to produce timely Board and KPI reports.
Improved customer service was one of the major goals for this project. We are realizing this goal, and are pleased to have received the Outstanding Achievement Award in Customer Experience from an independent Oracle committee.”
Tom Less, CFO, MetraRailAST led a 15-month turnkey implementation of a complex solution involving multiple software applications, third-party service providers, and hardware vendors. The project was completed on time and within budget, overcoming several infrastructures, logistical, and process challenges. Following the success of the initial implementation, a consumer-facing point-of-sale solution was deployed across all Metra lines, stations, and carriers within the next nine months.
Metra’s Revenue Accounting functions are streamlined and include:
Based on the highly successful implementation, Metra awarded AST a full-service Managed Services contract to provide reliable support to end users and keep the software and hardware running smoothly.
AST’s deep domain expertise in the Public Transit space ensured that Metra was able to deploy the solution to meet legislative needs in short order, significantly improving operational efficiency and providing a platform to streamline the analysis of ridership data to effectively market services.
