Midttrafik. From card to app with CIS

Everything is running smoothly now for the traffic company Midttrafik and its ‘Youth card’ customers. Kraftvaerk and Midttrafik have together developed a card-issuing system (CIS) that connects mitungdomskort.dk with the Midttrafik app. It means that Midttrafik’s customers can be issued with a Youth card on the app instead of as a printed paper-based travel card. The result is happy customers, and less time and money spent on administration and stamps.

In figures

Midttrafik has a very popular and well-functioning app for smartphone tickets and transit tickets (the Midttrafik app). The problem was that the Youth cards were not supported in the app. Midttrafik was using an IT system which issued all the Youth cards as paper-based cards. This was an expensive and non-customer-friendly solution, as the card had to be ordered two weeks in advance because of the time it took to print the cards and post them to the customer. With the new CIS solution, Youth card customers can now have their Youth travel cards delivered to the Midttrafik app.  

Lower postage costs

Midttrafik has already realised savings of DKK 70,000. A figure that will only increase as more people use the Midttrafik app. 

25% less administration

Depending on the customer’s previous card, the CIS solution can decide whether a period can be approved and automatically issued, or whether manual adjustments are required.

30% on the app

More than 30% of customers are already receiving their Youth cards via the app, and Midttrafik expects this figure to rise after the summer holidays when new students will be ordering their Youth cards.

Easy and flexible Youth card management on Midttrafik app

Automatic approval.  

The CIS solution can automatically approve up to 90% of all Youth cards. Approvals are based on business logic developed by Kraftvaerk in close collaboration with Midttrafik. For cards requiring manual approval, it is now easier for Midttrafik’s employees to view and revise data and to approve the card manually.  

Improved customer service.  

All events performed by the CIS solution, customers and employees are logged and are searchable. Midttrafik is therefore able to see when different actions have taken place. Moreover, Midttrafik’s customer service centre is now able to provide much faster assistance to customers telephoning or emailing, as the customer overview in CIS displays the complete history for each customer on the same monitor. There is now also a link to mitungdomskort.dk – the website where Youth cards are ordered – so customer service centre employees can view both data sources simultaneously.  

Reporting.  

CIS supports several types of reports, including reports for the National Agency for Education and Quality. Tailored reports can be used for statistics and analyses, enabling better and more timely communication with customers.  

“CIS has lived up to our requirements for a system which is very user-friendly as well as being extremely flexible and reliable.”

— Jeppe Færgegaard Sørensen 2020, Midttrafik

In the cloud and focused on reliability and flexibility

Scalability in the cloud.  

Kraftvaerk has developed the CIS solution using a service-oriented architecture in Microsoft Azure. The scalable cloud-based CIS solution means that we can scale up when lots of Youth cards are being ordered at the beginning of the academic year, while operating costs can be minimised during periods of low activity.  

  

Integrations make the difference.  

The visual component of the CIS solution is an administration web page for Midttrafik’s customer service centre and service staff. The web page is designed as an Azure web app with user authentication of the different roles. The responsive user interface is built in Vue.js.  

Through integrations, the system retrieves card data from the card-ordering website mitungdomskort.dk, permits the card data to be processed before forwarding it via integrations to the Midttrafik app. The logic is designed as Azure functions, which deliver messages via a service bus. These functions are at the very heart of the system.  

Events are logged in Cosmos DB, Azure Tables and Azure SQL. Relational data is stored in Azure SQL. The solution is monitored 24/7 with Application Insights, which alerts of any special events by email and MS Teams channels.

Kraftvaerk has an in-depth understanding of our products, on top of which they are solution-oriented and very professional. It has been a pleasure working with them.

— Britta Charmig 2020, Midttrafik

Increased flexibility

Midttrafik has introduced greater flexibility for the travel company’s Youth card customers, as they are now able to order and pay for their next travel period in the Midttrafik app. Moreover, delivery and production times are now much shorter, and this has also increased flexibility.  

Better service now available for Youth card customers in the Midttrafik app

The solution has been very important for Midttrafik’s customer service centre, where resources have now been released for other tasks.

— Jeppe Færgegaard Sørensen 2020, Midttrafik

Putting customers first

Anders Olsson

Lead Project Manager


anders.olsson@kraftvaerk.com