The expected benefits will materialise in the following ways:

Cost reduction Enhanced interoperability will allow the reduction of costs entailed by the following activities:

•data exchange between current systems with new ones;
•acquisition of Customer experience systems by railways operators;
•railway product distribution to final customers via third parties.
Besides, it might even help take the current TAP TSI to a higher functional level, fully in line with the principles of European law-making (“New Approach”, 1985), as no fixed data formats would need to be enforced by law in order to ensure interoperability. The ensuing cost reduction would apply to administrative burdens (the cost of updating the TSI), and to consequential hardware and software redesigns as well.

Increased revenues
Creating new value chains; generating additional revenue to Retailers and Railway Operators from richer product offerings and smart services to Customers.

Increased Agility
Agility (in the IT sense) will be increased by virtue of the flexibility of the framework. The consequence will be a reduced time-to-market of advanced Customer experience applications.

Better Experience for Customers
Integrating fragmented platforms and systems will contribute to a more attractive Rail System, as Customers enjoy continuous access to their personalised journey information systems; passengers treat their journey as a seamless extension of their working or leisure environment, whatever the mode. Besides, by aggregating suppliers’ systems to the offering, market of specialist suppliers of products and services will be encouraged to be compliant with the IF specification, thus putting additional downwards pressure on the cost of interoperability for Customer experience system developers.