High-Speed Migration And Managed Services

London South Eastern Railway (LSER), known as Southeastern, is a British train operating company (“TOC”) that runs the train services between London, Kent and parts of East Sussex. It operates one of the country's busiest networks with 392 trains carrying out approximately 640,000 passenger journeys every weekday. This includes the UK's first domestic high-speed Javelin trains between Kent and central London.

The privatisation of the railways in the 1990s requires today's railway franchises to be regularly re-tendered. Consequently, from time-to-time franchises move between operators. As a consequence of this each TOC must ensure business systems remain mobile and flexible, ready to switch to a new operator in a short time frame with minimal disruption.

Once hosted, the team purged existing non-LSER data, enabling the application to not only perform more efficiently, but also adhere to GDPR regulations.

Within five months, Claremont completed the technical data cleansing, thorough testing and live migration. On a Friday in August 2019, payroll and HR staff at LSER went home. The following Monday, they logged in to an entirely new, albeit identical system. Staff were paid using the same familiar processes, and yet in the background, a refreshed, refined and flexible solution was in place. 

Collaboration And Support Through Managed Services

Claremont's relationship with LSER didn't stop after the go-live. Aware of Claremont's industry-leading managed services, LSER were keen to gain ongoing support. 

Claremont immediately became a trusted support partner for the LSER team, providing hosting and second and third-line functional, technical, DBA and OS support.  Claremont delivers unlimited reactive and proactive support with an emphasis on ensuring incidents are not repeated and the system evolves.

For a period of time, Claremont provided full time on-site second-line functional and technical support, filling a staffing gap. When a new staff member joined LSER, Claremont assisted in their learning and development ensuring a quick and effective induction process.  

Claremont's managed service team prides itself on flexibility, ensuring that whatever happens, applications remain stable and consistent for the end-user. A combination of second and third line support alongside knowledge transfer proved highly successful.

During the last ten months (May 2020 to March 2021), EBS platform availability was 100%, and the managed service team achieved an average monthly feedback score of 9.65 out of 10. Service level agreements for both incident resolution and responses have been met 99% of the time, with only one incident resolution breach. 

By working co-operatively with LSER, anticipating their business needs and listening to their challenges, the new Oracle EBS environment was expertly supported and stable from the moment it went live.