Victor Borges: Developing digital services to transform Britain’s journeys

Understanding passenger behaviours, assessing why transport works well and what happens when a journey goes wrong. This detailed analysis is at the heart of Thales’s digital services work, supporting urban and mainline rail to run as efficiently as possible. As Product Manager, Victor Borges is part of a growing team leading Thales digital services work, helping to develop new products and services for customers.

“To exemplify how our products work, imagine that you are receiving a million emails a second and you need to make sense of all that information – that’s what we do for customers. We use machine learning and algorithms to take huge amounts of data and transform it into information, and from that generate knowledge. The whole process is about creating knowledge, so it is no longer guess work or a finger in the air. We are at the centre of digital transformation and a cultural shift.”

Victor trained as a chemical engineer in Brazil. He joined Thales last December, moving from a company where he led on asset management and performance forecasting for the oil and gas industry. This experience flows into his work for Thales where he forecasts and predicts how asset failures can happen in the transport system, and models how passengers behave. 

The move into transport was one he had been keen to make and he looks to the success of companies like Uber to show the potential impact which Thales’s digital services could bring to the transport sector. And it is all based on understanding customers and how they behave.

The advent of new technology allows us to explore new ways of understanding the passenger experience. And Thales is in a perfect position to support the implementation of new technologies. Our credentials in cyber security and system integration are world class. It is satisfying to know that the work I am doing will make a real difference. We’re not waiting for things to happen: we are putting ourselves ahead of the game and making sure passengers enjoy the journey as a result.

Thales has launched its latest digital services products this week, at InnoTrans 2018, the leading international trade fair for transport technology, which takes places every two years in Berlin. Core to this new range of services is the Thales Transport Digital Platform. This addresses many challenges facing the transport industry, such as allowing for on-premise and cloud deployment, supporting companies in different stages of their digital transformation journey. In order to mitigate concerns around data security, the platform is designed using Thales’s worldwide experience in cyber security. Guavus, a Thales company with an extensive track record in big data analytics, powers the platform, enabling customers to make the best use of their data.

“This is a new business model, a new model of operation and a new team - everything about it is different. The technology is amazing and I really enjoy taking data and making it into something useful for our customers: they are at the centre of everything we do. We are translating customer requirements and developing the product they need.”

Victor and Thales are transforming Britain’s journeys.