Enterprise software systems represent a significant investment for transit agencies. They play critical roles, supporting daily operations and management and touching numerous divisions. We help our clients make sure the systems they procure will truly meet their agency’s needs, both now and into the future. We do this by working with agency stakeholders, reviewing current systems, and investigating reporting needs to develop a set of functional requirements and future process flows that form the backbone of an enterprise system scope of work. Our proprietary requirements tool, containing over 4,000 general and transit-specific requirements, helps our team work with our clients to cover all areas of importance. We have worked with clients to procure a variety of enterprise systems, including fare collection systems, financial, supply chain, and human capital systems (Enterprise Resource Planning or ERP), planning and operational budgeting systems, and transit asset management systems (Enterprise Asset Management or EAM).

See a list of Enterprise System Selection projects

Four Nines works with our clients to identify ways to improve financial sustainability and the customer experience through fare policy. We help our clients identify and evaluate changes to fare pricing, structure, or policy that can help them meet their overarching goals, such as increasing revenue, streamlining fare payment and enabling more seamless connections, and improving equity. Using our Four Nines Fare Model, we are able to analyze how changes small and large will affect ridership and revenue. It is company policy that once a Fare Model is built for an agency, it is theirs to use as a continuing resource into the future, and we pride ourselves on having the confidence in our work to provide this high level of transparency. We are also cognizant of the importance of equity considerations when developing fare policy proposals and have completed many Title VI fare equity analyses for our clients as part of our fare studies.

See a list of Fare Policy projects

Implementation of a new system brings huge change to an organization. Four Nines provides support for our clients in this phase to keep the project on track. We help the project manager and implementation team prepare for the necessary changes and define the activities, roles, and responsibilities that will be crucial to the success of the project. Key tasks we perform in this phase are assessing the readiness of stakeholders to adopt the new system and identifying potential obstacles as it rolls out. Communication between all parties is important, and we assist our clients in developing metrics and ways of engaging with their stakeholders, tracking issues and risks, and forming a steering committee for executive communication and escalation of issues.

See a list of Implementation Oversight projects

Our project managers have experience with PMI, waterfall, and Agile as well as the use of a variety of modern tools like Jira, Asana and Teamwork. We have PMs certified by PMI as PMPs and Agile Certified Professionals, as well as ITIL certified professionals and CPAs. We focus on providing simple and efficient schedules and plans while still leveraging industry standards. Some projects might not warrant the rigor of a fully implemented framework, but our ability to use the language and some components enables all professionals to understand and operate in a common environment. In addition to traditional project management functions such as scheduling, budgeting, and task management, we enjoy problem solving and turning around projects that are lost or headed in the wrong direction.

See a list of Project Management projects

As a firm that stays up to date on emerging trends, technologies, and industry-wide practices, Four Nines lends support to transit agencies by helping them envision their future and then outline the best path forward to where they want to be. We offer strategy and planning services across agency functions, including budgeting, data management, asset management, IT, business processes, and fare systems. We know the dilemmas facing transit agencies cannot be solved with simple, quick fixes; strategy and planning involves taking the long view of an agency’s mission and goals. We begin with a current state analysis, then help agencies identify opportunities for short-term gains with minimal effort to prove the validity of change to stakeholders. Then, we work with our client to identify larger, long-term opportunities and detail a timeline for moving those forward. Together, we select performance metrics to track progress and set key milestones. Finally, we celebrate the achievement of milestones to keep spirits high and project participants engaged and focused even through prolonged processes of change.

See a list of Strategy & Planning projects

“rigor without rigidity”

Our team has deep experience in the transit industry, which means we know how to hold projects to a high standard while still having the flexibility to pursue innovative solutions. We have implemented creative approaches to gathering information in a number of areas to support this pursuit of innovative solutions. Our proprietary Requirements Tool serves as a repository of requirements for all types of enterprise system selections, from mobile apps to enterprise asset management systems. By starting with these standard sets of requirements, and then honing them in workshops with clients, we can customize the requirements to an agency and drastically speed up the procurement process without sacrificing quality in the scope of work. We also encourage our clients to release a Request for Information (RFI) before a Request for Proposals (RFP) to better prepare industry vendors for the release of an RFP and to give vendors a chance to provide feedback to the agency on the requested system. This idea of rigor without rigidity is also reflected in our Agile project management approach. All of our team members are well versed in this iterative method of project management.

“we know how to do things by the book, but we don’t throw the book at things”

The transit industry in the United States has a long history, and some of the standard operating procedures still at work within the industry have a history nearly as long. While we respect and are fluent in these traditional rules and customs surrounding transit, we know from our experience working with clients that the “standard” sometimes is not enough or does not adequately address the problem at hand. Our team uses the book as a guide, but does not hesitate to seek new ideas and alternatives in our work. As an example of the "out of the box" thinking that we bring to our engagements, we have pioneered the industry use of APIs in fare systems and helped bring mobile ticketing technology to our clients. Even within the parameters of a public sector organization, many opportunities exist to go after the latest transit technology trends. We help our clients discover and take advantage of these opportunities.

“focus on function”

When we talk with clients about their vision for the future, we help them focus on desired functionality instead of restrictive prescriptions. In other words, we help transit agencies describe what their system should do instead of how it should do it. While at first a seemingly small difference, approaching a project with a functional mindset instead of a prescriptive one can make space for inventive ideas and as yet unthought of solutions. Our proprietary Requirements Tool embodies this thinking with its compilation of requirements that focus on functionality, which means that the same requirements can be used across multiple agencies because they allow flexibility for vendors to meet the described need in a way that is best suited to the particular agency’s environment.

“people are the key to successful projects and policies”

New policies and processes can only get an agency so far. To be truly successful, they have to be properly supported by the people who implement them and who are affected by them. We see stakeholder communication and change management as essential to each and every one of our projects. We strive to partner with the staff and community members from the beginning of a project and then continue to involve them throughout, even though the level of involvement may change. We build these relationships early to develop a culture of trust and dialogue that serves to steady projects, even as the inevitable bumps in the road appear, and keeps them on the path to success.