Railvis.com shows the way

RAIL REVOLUTION

RAIL • CONNECTING THE RAILFREIGHT BUSINESS WITH DIGITISED TOOLS IS THE AIM OF THE RAILVIS.COM PLATFORM, GATHERING INFORMATION ON CAPACITY ACROSS EUROPE IN ONE PLACE

THE RAILFREIGHT BUSINESS has been slow to change but new tools emerging from the wave of digitisation aim to bring the sector into a more connected world. HCB spoke to Adam Fronek, co-founder and director of Railvis.com, to find out what his ideas can do for the industry.

HCB: What was the idea behind the creation of the Railvis.com platform? AF: I worked in a logistics company, organising daily railfreight transports for our customers. I got tired of the endless phone calls and inefficient communication. It was very difficult to find suitable wagons for rental and free locomotive capacity. I attended many conferences on the rail industry and realised that all rail transport managers had the same problems.

Around that time, digitisation and useful applications were starting to appear in my daily routines and I realised that the railfreight market was left out. Our team grabbed their courage and decided to change these difficult processes and to make the whole rail industry more efficient.

HCB: So, what is Railvis.com all about? AF: Railvis.com is a search platform for locomotives and wagons available for rental all across the European continent. Railway companies can offer their available wagons and locomotives and all potential customers can see all the offers, on a transparent map, and compare them in terms of price, technical parameters and location. Then they can make the best decision. Searching and ordering is fully efficient and modernised thank to digitisation and the rail logistics market in Europe becomes interconnected.

HCB: What does Railvis.com bring to its users? And who can join the platform? AF: Thanks to Railvis.com, companies can save a lot of time and money, win more opportunities, get a complete overview of the rail market and optimise their processes. Users that are offering available rolling stock can find potential customers all over Europe in an efficient manner. Users search for available rolling stock can find many different offers, compare them and choose the best.

Being part of our platform brings enormous time savings. Searching and ordering processes that used to take days or even weeks are now being done within 15 minutes.

The platform can be used by railway operators, wagon and locomotive rental companies, wagon or locomotive manufacturers, workshops, freight forwarders, logistics companies, traders, manufacturers and industrial company.

Recently, a Polish railway operator and a Romanian freight forwarding company struck a deal for a two-month rental of specific wagons, confirming the platform’s importance – without Railvis.com they would have never found each other.

HCB: Why should companies join your project? Who has already joined? AF: On top of the benefits I already mentioned, I would like to highlight that our platform is independent, simple to use and extremely secure. Privacy and data security are of the utmost importance to us. Our server, located in Germany, fulfils the highest digital security requirements in Europe. We listen to feedback from our customers and constantly improve and customise the parameters of our platform to the current needs of the railfreight industry.

We can also digitise and implement clients’ fleet systems, allowing them to be seamlessly synchronised with the Railvis.com platform.

RAILVIS.COM PROVIDES IMMEDIATE VISIBILITY

Thus, clients’ free capacities for rental are immediately visible in the market and ready to find customers. Last but not least, our platform enables large-scale uploading and connection to the web interface and corporate systems.

We are ready to bring this revolutionary change in logistics processes and help the whole railfreight industry to move into a new era. We strongly believe that this modernisation can bring more freight volumes onto rail and help it gain market share from road transport and sea freight.

Many different railway operators, wagon and locomotive rental companies, freight forwarders and logistics companies have already joined Railvis.com and new companies are entering every day. The first companies came largely from central and western Europe but now the platform has new users coming from the Balkans and eastern Europe. railvis.com

MEMBERS OF THE RAILVIS.COM TEAM Railvis.com • immediate overview of free capacities in Europe • efficient usage of railway assets, increasing productivity • significant time and money savings • modernising and digitising railfreight in Europe • secure, independent platform