RATP Dev relies on Ideals for fast and secure data sharing when taking on global transport projects

Overview

RATP Dev is a French company that operates and maintains urban and intercity public transport systems in 16 countries. Responsible for around 1.5 billion passenger journeys a year, it’s one of the five largest transportation providers in the world.

After successfully bidding to run a city’s transportation system, RATP Dev has to quickly coordinate with the existing service provider to ensure a smooth handover and minimize any disruptions. In 2023, the team decided they could no longer rely on email to handle the increasing volume and size of documents they needed to exchange with their predecessors after winning new transportation contracts. 

After analyzing the tools available, Nathan Lachaud, CIO for France/Switzerland, says they chose Ideals because “it was really user-friendly and so easy to set up.” His team is now able to get complex projects up and running in less than an hour using Ideals.

The context

RATP Dev is a subsidiary of the RATP Group (Regie Autonome Transports Parisiens), a state-owned company set up in 1949 to operate Paris’s public transport network. The spin-off was set up in 2002 to take the parent company’s expertise into new global markets. It manages all forms of transport including urban metros, tramways, and buses.

In recent years the company was struggling to cope with the growing volume of handover documents when it won new contracts to run transportation systems, such as Lyon’s metro network. The team worried that emails were being missed or viewed by unauthorized persons as they had no way of controlling access levels. Given the sensitivities around tenders for public transport they also needed to demonstrate that they were fulfilling the terms of the contract.

To resolve these problems, they decided to look for a dedicated platform that would allow them to communicate effectively and securely, not only with the operator they were replacing but also with their client.

“Our communications don’t just have to be secure, they also need to be transparent – that was the essential element we were looking for,” explained Nathan.

Key challenges

While the tender process for new transportation contracts can take over a year, the implementation stage is often very short. This means the outgoing management company has very little time to provide the new contractor with everything they need to ensure a smooth transition. 

RATP Dev was looking for a platform that would allow the team to:

• Store documents securely
• Exchange vast quantities of information, including large files, very quickly
• Control access by allocating users different permission levels
• Run regular reports to ensure full transparency for their client

Nathan explained: “We weren’t necessarily looking for lots of features; the most important thing was being able to exchange protected documents of any size, knowing they couldn’t get lost.” 

Solutions

After creating their first data room the team was delighted by how user-friendly the platform was and how easy to set up. With Ideals they were able to:

• Quickly and easily upload large amounts of data
• Control access to different types of documents
• Ensure full visibility of any modifications via the reports 
• Set up alert notifications for when new documents were added to the data room
• Archive finished projects.

“We no longer need to have long-winded email exchanges and worry about messages getting lost or being seen by somebody that they shouldn’t,” says Nathan. 

”The ergonomics of the platform make it easy for our administrators to set different permission levels, which is particularly important for anything related to finance or HR where we don’t want unauthorized people having access.”

The future

In the past year alone RATP Dev has almost doubled its share of the French market, winning a record seven projects. It has extended its partnership with Ideals and currently has eight active projects involving some 200 users.

Nathan is particularly impressed by how much time the team saved by being able to duplicate a folder structure from a previous project: “It makes things much faster and means new projects can be set up in less than an hour.”

This will be critical as RATP Dev continues to successfully grow into new markets.