Virgin Trains East Coast | Unifying Mobile Applications

Virgin Trains East Coast provide their staff with a suite of apps to help them with their day to day tasks and to ensure that the service runs smoothly and efficiently.

These apps are a combination of commercial products and bespoke apps created by third party developers.

With a large estate of devices and apps to manage and with more apps to be developed, a clear strategy was required to ensure the continued success of the apps and the future direction of the mobile platform.

A Discovery was conducted by Razor to validate the known challenges but also to uncover the not so obvious issues.

Contextual enquiries were conducted observing staff on and off the trains using all of the apps designed to assist them in their day to day activities. Personas were generated to be used as a reference as we developed the strategy to ensure all parties were catered for in the long term.

With a large estate of devices and apps to manage and with more apps to be developed, a clear strategy was required to ensure the continued success of the apps and the future direction of the mobile platform.

Deep technical and security reviews were conducted on a combination of third party and bespoke mobile apps and their supporting API’s and admin interfaces.

Having a broad understanding of the current technical implementations, constraints, security and how people were using or not using the apps enabled us to create a strategy that was suitably ambitious for a brand like Virgin but also realistic to be able to start making positive changes straight away.

The end result of the strategy is a clear direction and control with a clear path to bringing the existing apps into line ensuring they continue to provide value.

Risks around security, fragmentation and adoption have been reduced based on the research conducted.

With the additional delivery of a tactical plan, Virgin Trains East Coast have been able to make positive moves already to achieve the long term vision.