A few days after the relatively discreet launch of its new mobile applicationThe SNCF has decided to make a big impact on the digital front. Backed by Chairman Guillaumpe Pépy, SNCF Digital and Communications Director Yves Tyrode presented the #digitalSNCF plan point by point. On the agenda: the company's new door-to-door mobile application, widespread mobile broadband coverage, a focus on open data and APIs, an investment fund (30 million euros, from equity) targeting start-ups and called "Digital SNCF Ventures", and, internally, the company's digital transformation.
Questioned last October by Secretary of State Axelle Lemaire, the SNCF is now providing a clear response to the problems of connectivity on board its network, even if priority is no longer necessarily given to Wi-Fi. "This lack of speed cannot be reduced to wi-fi or not on certain trains", says Yves Tyrode, who is aiming for "3G and 4G coverage on all trains and in all stations". In the end, therefore, Wi-Fi will be used "only in certain specific cases", i.e. the busiest stations and TGV trains, as a complement to 4G coverage.
Guillaume Pepy and the SNCF are ambitious, promising a high-speed digital transformation
Mobile tools are also the focus of increased effort - and investment - as demonstrated by the launch of the new application bringing together the company's various mobile portals, with a focus on door-to-door. It could well benefit from the other major announcement of this conference, the birth of "Digital SNCF Ventures": a 30 million euro investment fund over three years, financed from our own funds. It will be operational in the coming weeks, and should enable us to acquire shares in the most promising start-ups.
This digital transformation, which will mobilise 150 million euros a year for three years, will also lead to "a rethinking of our profession", which should be accompanied by the equipping of SNCF agents with tablets. These are new ambitions, the effects of which the railway company intends to measure quickly, and has already set a date in 18 months' time for the - many - observers of this issue.
