Case Study: Nederlandse Spoorwegen (Dutch Railways) achieves real-time operations and higher customer satisfaction with Microsoft Power BI

Smarter use of data eases the daily commute on Dutch Railways

Nederlandse Spoorwegen (Dutch Railways), the Netherlands’ principal rail operator carrying about 1.1 million passengers daily, struggled with fragmented data, limited real‑time analytics and slow IT processes that prevented effective capacity planning and crowd management. To modernize its analytics and act faster, Dutch Railways adopted cloud-based tools including Microsoft Azure and Microsoft Power BI (along with SQL and HDInsight) to consolidate data and build up-to-the-minute operational insight.

Using Microsoft Power BI to power live dashboards and reports and Azure for large-scale analytics, the operator launched features such as the Seat Finder app, real‑time station and delay dashboards, and predictive maintenance planning—enabling better carriage allocation, quicker response to disruptions and more efficient logistics. The Microsoft Power BI–enabled solution sped development, reduced costs, supported migration of 80+ apps to the cloud, and helped boost customer satisfaction to 80%, service punctuality to over 92%, and travel information provision to 82%.

Nederlandse Spoorwegen (Dutch Railways)

Martijn Scheele

Head of Data and Analytics