PROJECT REPORT

On Information Systems at

Indian Railway Catering and Tourist Corporation

(IRCTC)
By Group 6 of Section I, 2013-15 Batch-MBA

Group Members: Seat No. 39: Tanu Chadha Seat No. 41: Aradhya Darshan Seat No. 43: Vaibhav Gulati Seat No. 45: Tanya Dua Seat No. 49: Sukrit Sethi Seat No. 54: Ayesha Mahajan Seat No. 74: Ishita Sharma

Abstract

Our main objective while creating this project report was to study the various types of Information Systems that are currently implemented and also the ones which are expected to be released in future. IRCTC, in recent times, has shown a tremendous potential in field of developing Information Systems with its continuously dedicated servers, working day and night to carry out ticket bookings for different trains, from different parts of the country. In our project, we ceaselessly yet relentlessly kept on imbibing and garnering data about all important systems at IRCTC, with the help of IRCTCs official website, Wikipedia and Google. All the technical data collected in the process is certified and correct, according to Centre of Railway Information Systems (CRIS). We, as a group, worked out and divided the project work between all the members, so that everyone in the group gets to contribute their part. This project report is a compilation of everyones efforts and hardwork.

Table of Contents

PART 1

CHAPTER NAME Introduction Mission Objectives Organisation Structure

Page. No 4 5 5 6 7 8 11

2 3

Our Objectives for choosing IRCTC Technology at IRCTC Information Systems at IRCTC

4 5 6

Problems at IRCTC and probable developments Suggestions and Conclusion. Bibliography

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PART 1: INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION TO THE COMPANY: Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation, abbreviated to IRCTC, is a subsidiary of the Indian Railways that handles the catering, tourism and online ticketing operations of the railways. IRCTC is a Public Sector Enterprise under Ministry of Railways. IRCTC was incorporated on 27th September, 1999 as an extended arm of the Indian Railways to upgrade, professionalize and manage the catering and hospitality services at stations, on trains and other locations and to promote domestic and international tourism through development of budget hotels, special tour packages, information & commercial publicity and global reservation systems. IRCTC is better known for changing the face of railway ticketing in India. It pioneered internet-based rail ticket booking through its website, as well as from the mobile phones via GPRS or SMS. Ticket cancellations can also be done online. In addition to e-tickets, IRCTC also offers I-tickets that are basically like regular tickets except that they are booked online and delivered by post. There has been a latent demand in the country for ticket availability at the door-step. IRCTC has already developed this facility at Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore, Kolkata and Mumbai. Very soon the facility will spread to Hyderabad, Pune and Ahmedabad. IRCTC is banking on newly started catering and facility management division through which it provides a one window solution for catering, front office, housekeeping, security, laundry, ITES and horticulture services to government organizations, corporate and educational institutions. This segment also includes taking up of hospitality project on turnkey basis. Setting up of IRCTC brand Food Kiosks at DMRC stations is also planned. Non Railway Segment has a potential to contribute around 30% to its total revenue in coming years. IRCTC has commenced 65 units from 2010 to 2012 in Non Railway Segment across India. While discharging its mandate, the Company has made a significant mark in its passengerservices oriented business lines like setting up of Food Plazas on Railway premises, Railneer', Rail Tour Packages and Internet Ticketing' bringing great deal of professionalism into the operations. In addition to above, IRCTC is managing on Board Catering Services in
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Rajdhani / Shatabdi / Duronto and Mail / Express Trains and Static Catering Units such as Refreshment Rooms, AVMs, Book Stalls, Milk Stalls, Ice Cream Stalls, Petha & Peda Stalls etc. across the Indian Railway Network. The address for IRCTC Website is www.irctc.co.in - MISSION STATEMENT: To be the leader for providing high quality catering, tourism and travel related services on the Indian Railways primarily and also outside the Railways in the country.

- OBJECTIVES: To be a significant player in the hospitality business for both Indian Railway and nonIndian Railway related services. To promote railway tourism across the country for all the segments of Rail Passengers. To provide single window solution to its customers including train travel, hotel accommodation, road transfers, hospitality, catering etc. To promote private sector participation and expertise to improve quality of products and services for all segments of Railway Passengers across all price bands. To imbibe strong customer friendly, professional and ethical work culture. To maintain leading position in internet ticketing, e-commerce and technology for customers interface for railway passengers/ customers. To develop budget hotels on Railway and non- Railway land. To provide high quality package drinking water (Railneer). To adopt strong Corporate Governance practices. To work towards creation of additional infrastructure on Railway or non-railway premises in their mandated line of business with a view to improve the Gross Block.

Corporate Office of IRCTC is situated at New Delhi, which is headed by the Managing Director. Managing Director is being assisted by three Directors, Director (Catering Services), Director(Tourism & Marketing) and Director(Finance) and nine Group General Managers. For smooth operations of the business across all over the country, five Zonal Offices are working at Delhi , Kolkata, Mumbai, Chennai & Secunderabad. South Zone Office is headed by Regional Director and all other Zonal Offices are headed by Group General Managers. All Group General Managers have vast experience of working in Indian Railways. These Zonal Offices are assisted by ten Regional Offices at Lucknow ,Chandigarh , Jaipur, Bhubneshwar, Guwahati, Patna , Bhopal , Ahmadabad, Bangalore and Ernakulam, which are headed by Chief Regional Managers / Regional Managers. Current chairman of IRCTC is Shri Rakesh Kumar Tandon.

PART 2: OUR OBJECTIVES FOR CHOOSING IRCTC

IRCTC, in recent times, has shown a potential in field of tremendous developing information systems with its servers continuously dedicated for 23 hours (1 hour everyday for maintenance activities). We wanted to find out the current scanerio at IRCTC and also some information about the companys future prospects. Generally there is a huge load on the website at 10 am, when booking of Tatkal tickets opens. The booking of tickets varies from time to time based on festivals and vacations. We wanted to explore the type of systems handling such a large number of users at a particular time. IRCTC is currently using 58 iridium servers and 10 more servers to be added to cater the heavy traffic in peak hours. We wanted to explore the technology currently implemented at IRCTC. IRCTC has a huge span of functions which are accessible through its website such as Plan your Travel, Booking Status, Cancellation option, Check your PNR, E -tickets and many tourism options as well. We wanted to find out the different features offered by IRCTC to its end-users. And hence due to these reasons, we have chosen IRCTC as our company for the project.

PART 3: TECHNOLOGY AT IRCTC

Following is information about technology, currently implemented at IRCTC: Website Background Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporations website (www.irctc.co.in) offers online rail ticket booking, and checking of ticket reservation status. Includes train schedules, availability of tickets and a travel planner. Popularity rank Country India City Delhi, IN Bombay, IN Visitors Country Rank 98.9% 40

Visitors City Rank 12.5% 12.5% 43 38 41

Hyderabad, IN 10%

Server-side Programming Languages Microsoft's Active Server Pages technology on the .NET framework. Java is a generalpurpose language originally developed by Sun Microsystems.

Client-side Programming Language JavaScript is a lightweight, object-oriented, cross-platform scripting language, mainly used within web pages.

JavaScript Library MooTools (My Object-Oriented Tools) is a modular, object-oriented JavaScript framework, originally developed by Valerio Proietti. MooTools 1.11 (1% of sites use a newer version)

Markup Language Transitional version of HTML. (HTML Transitional 4.01)

Character Encoding ISO-8859-1 (informally also called Latin-1) is an 8-bit character set for Western European languages.

Image File Formats JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) is a lossy compression method suitable to store photographic images. GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) is a lossless compression image format, originally introduced by CompuServe and suitable to store graphics, logos and simple animations.

Site Elements External Cascading Style Sheets define style rules in a separate CSS file. Inline Cascading Style Sheets define style rules directly within an (X)HTML element using the style attribute. Gzip (GNU zip) is a file compression algorithm.

A strong ETag is an HTTP header field for validation of cached web pages, that indicates a byte-for-byte identical page in the cache.

SSL Certificate Authority GeoTrust is a SSL certificate authority owned by Symantec. This includes SSL certificates issues by the certification branch of Equifax, which was acquired by GeoTrust.

Web Server The Internet Information Services (IIS) are a set of Internet-based services for Windows, developed by Microsoft. Microsoft-IIS 7.5 (2% of sites use a newer version)

Operating System Windows is a popular operating system produced by Microsoft.

Traffic Analysis Tool Google Analytics is a free service to get detailed statistics about the visitors of a website, provided by Google. Advertising Network Yahoo Advertising offers a range of advertising solutions, including Right Media. Top Level Domain India .in

Content Language English

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Information Systems at IRCTC:

PASSENGER RESERVATION SYSTEM: IRCTC is better known for changing the face of railway ticketing in India. It pioneered internet-based rail ticket booking through its website, as well as from the mobile phones via GPRS or SMS. Ticket cancellations can also be done online. In addition to e-tickets, IRCTC also offers I-tickets that are basically like regular tickets except that they are booked online and delivered by post. The tickets PNR status is also made available. Commuters on the Mumbai Suburban Railway can also book season tickets through the IRCTC website. IRCTC has also launched a loyalty program called Shubh Yatra for frequent travellers. Through this program, passengers can avail of discounts on all tickets booked round the year by paying an upfront annual fee. Seeking to make it easier to book e-tickets, IRCTC launched a scheme called Rolling Deposit Scheme (RDS). RDS is a hassle-free e-ticket booking scheme allowing passengers to reserve seats against advance money kept with the corporation. IRCTC has also added flights and hotels booking facilities to their line of online reservation services. Generally there is a huge load on the website at 10 am, when booking of Tatkal tickets opens. The booking of tickets varies from time to time based on festivals and vacations. IRCTC is currently using 58 iridium servers and 10 more servers to be added to cater the heavy traffic in peak hours. As of May 2013, the ticketing site of the IRCTC is able to handle about 1.2 lakh concurrent connections on web servers and can book about 2000 tickets per minute. Indian Railways plans to spend about 100 crore (US$16 million) to strengthen the website to enable it for booking 7200 tickets per minute. CRIS, the technical arm of railways, is involved in the upgrading of the IRCTC website. According to a senior Railway Ministry official, the average booking per day has been increased from 3.67 lakh in 2012 to 4.15 lakh in May 2013. Approximately, 31 crore reserve tickets are booked in a year out of which 55% of tickets are sold through windows, 37% of tickets are booked online and 8% are booked by ticketing agents. IRCTC's highest ever single day booking is 5.02 lakh e-tickets on 1 March 2013.

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It is also introducing new features from September, this year, to reduce online ticket booking woes. The website will now segregate visitors into two categories those logging in to book tickets and those seeking information. Only 30% people log on to IRCTC website daily to book tickets, while the rest include people seeking information about trains and availability of reservation. The website will lead to a separate plan your journey link. The users can navigate to separate link for queries and information. The ticket booking will get faster as the number of hits will get reduced on the ticket booking site. IRCTC will also introduce online concessional tickets for differently abled passengers. Till now, such passengers had to buy discounted tickets from the railway station as IRCTC was not selling any concessional tickets. The Centre for Rail Information System (CRIS) is developing a software for this and it will be ready by March next year. In another passenger-friendly move, details of the retiring rooms all over the Indian Railways will be made available on the IRCTC website. The data is being compiled. The passengers would be able to book the retiring room at the time of booking the ticket. CRIS is also developing software for this facility.

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PASSENGER RESERVATION SYSTEM DATA WAREHOUSE: PRS Data Warehouse is centrally hosted Data Warehouse providing the Decision Support System to Passenger Reservation System.

REAL TIME TRAIN INFORMATION SYSTEM: A joint team of Indian railways and IIT-Kanpur developed the real-time train running information system, a technology which will help a mobile user to get the information about the exact location of a train. Under the new technology the user will have to type the train number and SMS it to 09415139139 or 09664139139 for getting the exact location of a train on real-time basis. The satellite-based train tracking system was jointly developed by the Centre For Railway Information Systems (CRIS), the IT arm of Indian railways and Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur to overcome the limitations of the existing Train Running Information System and is currently also implemented at IRCTC for enquiry purposes.

At present the real-time train running information system service covers 36 pairs of premier trains. Some of the trains which have been provided with the new technology include Mumbai Rajdhani, Howrah Rajdhani, Dibrugarh Rajdhani, Sealdah Duronto and Shatabdi trains for Bhopal, Kanpur and Amritsar. The Indian Railway has allocated 121 crore rupees for the project and the service is likely to be extended to all major trains over the next 18 months. The Indian Railways has received the permission from the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) to operate the system through its satellite. The railways department, however, sought fresh order from ISRO, to extend the facility to other major trains.
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Technical specifications for the loco-equipment have been finalized and sent to IRPMU. Signing of MoU is pending with IRPMU. Due to criticality of operations, the project has been designed to utilize the alternate medium of transmission of data. In the entire geographic region of India no any communication media is covering 100%, therefore utilization of satellite is found necessary. Railway Board has requested ISRO to allocate sufficient frequencies on S-band. The project shall be progressed as soon as the frequencies get allotted. However the new interface has been launched on 6th September 2013.

BENEFITS: Automatic capture of Train running Information & Automatic plotting of Control Charts in COA Stress free Work Conditions for Controllers Optimum Utilization of Resources Richer MIS for Management Better co-ordination. Improved Customer Services.

IR WEB PORTAL SYSTEM: IR web portal provides the single point access to all the relevant information pertaining to Indian railways. It is running successfully since the year 2010 and consists of the following online applications: Web and SMS based complaint Management System. Complaint Management System deals with online complain regarding any grievances pertaining to railways for quick redressal of grievances. Computerized booking of Retiring Room. 40 Locations of Retiring room is now computerized. Computerized booking of Cloak Room. 2 Location of Cloak Room is computerized. All the zonal, Production Unit and Training institutes web sites are now centrally hosted and maintained. 37 Railway web sites are online under IR web Portal, including IRCTC.
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Web Site

Complaint Mgmt. System

Retiring Room

Cloak Room

January 2010

October 2010

October 2010

October 2010

Sanctioned by Railway Board

Study and preparation

Project started

First phase of website migration completed

Complaint management system, cloak room & retiring room app online

2006

2007-2008

2009

2009

2010

37 web sites have been migrated in IR Web Portal with standardized look-n-feel and technology Web and SMS Complaint Management System has given the Railways a avenue to receive public grievances and address them quickly Retiring Room application has enabled Network booking along with transparency Rugged and secured Central Architecture. State of the art technology implemented. Well accepted by the users and web masters.

NEXT GENERATION E-TICKETING SYSTEM: A high performing, scalable and secure eticketing site to address performance and scalability issues faced by the IRCTC e-ticketing application, at the time of reserved ticket booking during the peak load. It is developed in-house on open standard based technologies and shall deliver all the functionalities available on IRCTC e-ticketing site (irctc.co.in) in a user friendly manner. It shall allow 1,20,000 concurrent user sessions with sufficient headroom to cater future growth for next two years.
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Timeline of events: Sanctioned by Railway Board Study and Preparation Project Started Testing of eTicketing application by IRCTC Go Live Dec.,2011 Jan.,2012 Jan.,2012 Jul.,2012 Jan., 2014

Benefits for passengers : Accessibility to site during peak load Stringent User Registration process bringing down cornering of tickets by fictitious users. User friendly options shall improve customer satisfaction. Resume option to user to continue transaction from the point his session closed/Aborted Automatic booking if user has successfully done the payment. Informing the users through SMS regarding the status of incomplete transaction.

Benefits to Railways/IRCTC : IPR with Indian Railways Improvement in System transparency System build on latest technology Vendor Independence Increase in bookings means higher revenue Business continuity

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Next Generation e-Ticketing (NGeT) Journey Planner: Integration of limited number of servers of IRCTC e-ticketing site with NGeT site to deliver journey planning services via NGeT site so as to free resources on IRCTC site to improve system performance. Developed inhouse on open standard based technologies with advanced features to improve customer experience during journey planning shall share the journey planning load of IRCTC thus freeing the resources on servers integrated with NGeT and improve the success rate of booking. Timeline of events: Idea generation Study and Preparation Project Started Testing of Integrated application by IRCTC Go Live May,2013 June,2013 June,2013 July,2013 September,2013

Benefits for passengers : Improved chances of Accessibility to site during peak load. User friendly Journey Planner shall improve customer satisfaction.

Benefits to Railways/IRCTC : Interim Relief to passengers shall improve Railways credibility. Resources Available to serve more users during peak load. Increase in bookings on account of resource availability implying higher revenue. Testing of Technology and application before full scale Roll out of NGeT.

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PART 4: Problems at IRCTC and probable developments

Of late, IRCTCs e-ticketing service has been marred by bandwidth congestion, server errors and transaction failures. To do away with these glitches, Railways has initiated steps to augment e-ticket handling capacity of its website. The new e-ticketing project will facilitate booking of about 7 lakh tickets per day. It will be launched in March 2014. With this, at least 80% people who log on to the website would be able to book tickets. At present, passengers often face problems in booking online tickets due to technical glitches. And, each time the website asks people not to push the back or refresh button, making one sit glued to the computer. At times, the website shows the session as expired and asks visitors to login again. IRCTC says these problems occur when too many users log in at the same time. IRCTC and CRIS are jointly working to enhance the existing ticket booking capacity and address online booking issues. The new project is under implementation at an estimated cost of about Rs 88 crore. Railway Board has said it will be implemented as per the specification provided by CRIS. Besides, Microsoft is developing a mobile application for IRCTCs e-ticketing which will work on Windows 8 Operating System on mobile as well as personal computers. The application is ready and will be launched soon. OTHER MINOR PROBLEMS - Some minor problems are mentioned below: Home Page Primary purposes of website - Reservation and Train Inquiry are not visible It's difficult to find the starting point especially for a novice user Lots of advertisements on the home page Lot of blinking / animated portions distract the user Icons and featured text are not at proper places
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 The login portion itself has too many options Layout doesnt look professional. User Registration Page Form does not fit into a single window, ideally it should User name and password are asked at end, they should be at the beginning Shipping address is not necessary on this page Designation contains only 25 characters, should be 50 characters Value Added Services are on the same page here, which can be avoided The user has to login again after registration, this should be avoided Sometimes, even after registration, logging in results in a message that the user is not registered. Plan My Travel Page Icons arent clear as to their purpose - Train Icons for From and To. Selection date is today by default, but i-ticket (default option) requires minimum 3 days in future It is difficult to understand the three different types of tickets, there is help icon, but it opens in a popup window. The list of trains after submission, comes below the fold. It's difficult to understand that something happened after the submission. There are many pop-ups availability, route, fare etc. This should be avoided. Ideally, an option to book the return ticket too should be provided. The request can be saved and used later, if the booking for that date has not yet started. There are also advertisements and other links on the Play My Travel page, they distract the user from the main task. Checking availability is a crucial part of the booking process, but the user has to click a button and see a popup window for this. Many a times, this even comes up with an Unable to retrieve due to communication failure problem!
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Payment Options There are too many payment options, and difficult to understand which one is better. This also comes up in a pop-up window. Ideally, this can be a preference that can be set in the user profile. Many a times, the booking process fails on payment, despite a note that you can see this in the failed payments page, it does not show up.

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PART 5: Suggestions and Conclusion

Apart from the improvements that are already being worked upon by CRIS, our suggestions for improvement at IRCTC would be as follows: 1) Making the website completely live, taking inspirations from different live websites like Windows Live, Plurk, Twitter and Facebook. 2) Expanding its reach of operations, by making an International variant of its website, so that the visiting tourists can book their tickets separately. 3) Making the website 24x7, and carrying on maintenance activites on an even lesser basis. 4) Increasing the bandwidth of the website, which would further lead to more speed and efficient website performance. 5) The major problems mentioned above should be immediately looked upon and resolved for end-user convenience. Some appropriate solutions for above mentioned minor problems would be as follows: 1. Single screen, rich internet application. 2. Reservation process on the home page of IRCTC 3. Login not required for checking availability, only for booking and can be done after booking. 4. Station code lookup while the user types the name 5. Train availability select multiple trains, and click once to get availability in all 6. Single date field, automatic format conversion 7. In line contextual help available 8. Visual effects to show the progress of the process 9. Single spot for advertisement can rotate 10. Can change any parameter at any time, and the remaining will update automatically e.g. Change in date, will automatically check availability for selected train 11. Payment options one chosen by default, others available on request

With this, we would like to conclude the project.

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PART 6: Bibliography
1. www.irctc.co.in 2. www.google.com 3. www.wikipedia.org 4. www.mehtanirav.com 5. www.cris.org.in 6. www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com

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