Ticket to Ride

IRCTC
has undertaken several IT initiatives over the last year. These include online
reservations and faster delivery of tickets through an e-commerce initiative. It
has also enabled booking of railway tickets and PNR alert services on mobile
phones. It also launched mobile reservation services using speech-recognition
technology on Hutch's GSM network and Reliance's CDMA network (using Java).
The service is also available on IDEA and Tata.

 IRCTC also facilitates customer tracking of tickets in transit. It
implemented an ERP system to take care of its in-house processes. The company
has enabled online payments as well with over 20 banks using cash cards and
credit cards. All of these have led to IRCTC developing a strong and happy
customer base.

IRCTC has been providing PNR alerts on mobile phones and mobile reservation
services since 2004. This service is available on various mobile operator
networks such as IDEA, Tata, Reliance and Hutch.

Post implementation, all enquiries and reservations are available on its Web
site. There has been a significant reduction in queue and improvement in the
quality of service. The company further improved its turnover from Rs 101 crore
in 2003-04 to Rs 176 crore in 2004-05.

Broadvision's e-commerce suite (one-to-one enterprise) was used to build
the application that talks to the railway PRS system and enables users to book
tickets. IRCTC also developed Web services to allow mobile phone applications
based on speech, GPRS and Java, which talks to the PRS.