How Trainline Transformed to the Product Model and Doubled Its Value
Moving from an outsourced classic IT model to empowered cross functional internal product team turned Trainline into the Number 1 travel app in the app store (Monday to Friday).
Trainline, a UK-based rail ticket reseller, underwent a remarkable transformation that saw its valuation soar from £500 million to over £2 billion in just four years.
The secret? Embracing the product model.
Let's explore how this transformation revolutionised their business and what lessons product leaders can learn.
This is a summary of Trainline’s real transformation case study in “Transformed: Moving to the Operating Model”
The Legacy Approach: Stagnation in the Rail Industry
Before its transformation, Trainline operated with a classic IT model that provided minimal results. Software engineering was outsourced, product management was non-existent, and designers were limited to marketing assets. Their digital products were outdated, with eight-week release cycles that couldn't effectively serve customers.
Despite establishing itself as a centralised online booking platform following the privatisation of the UK's rail network, Trainline had stalled. The company needed a dramatic shift to break free from the constraints of a legacy industry.
The Catalyst for Change
When private equity firm KKR purchased Trainline in 2014, they saw untapped potential. They brought in a new leadership team, including CEO Clare Gilmartin from eBay, CTO Mark Holt, and CPO Jon Moore to spearhead the transformation.
This new leadership recognised that to unleash real value, every part of the organisation needed to change. They needed to move from a feature-focused approach to a problem-solving mindset, from requirements-driven development to customer-centric innovation.
Building the Foundation: Product Training and Coaching
The transformation began with prioritising three key disciplines: engineering, product management, and design. Rather than completely replacing the existing team, Moore discovered many were eager to learn modern product management practices.
"Coaching became a first-order priority, and multiple hours were spent every day working individually with team members."
The leadership team invested heavily in product training and coaching, discussing critical concepts like product discovery and establishing a faster test-and-learn cadence. They created a "Weekly Wins" forum for teams to share insights, test data, and prototypes—fostering a collaborative culture focused on outcomes rather than outputs.
Reimagining Their Approach to Problem-Solving
Trainline's transformation went beyond structural changes. They completely reimagined how they approached solving problems:
Empowered cross-functional teams that understood business context and had autonomy to innovate
Design as a superpower with rapid prototyping and user testing
Investment in data science to unlock insights from their "box of gold with 10 inches of dust on top"
Customer-centric product vision focused on solving their "Super Seven" customer pain points
This approach led to innovative solutions like crowdsourced train occupancy data, which made headlines and attracted talent from top tech companies.
The Transformation Results
Trainline's product-led transformation delivered extraordinary results:
Migrated to AWS with 100% cloud-native operations
Became the #1 travel app in the App Store (Monday-Friday). Beating Uber!
Released over 20,000 individual components at a rate of 100+ per week
Expanded internationally and diversified beyond rail travel
Doubled their valuation, leading to a £2 billion IPO
As one analyst noted, they became the "Uber of Rail," completely repositioning in the broader travel category.
FAQs
Q. What was the key challenge Trainline faced regarding customer perception of ticket prices?
Trainline's customers consistently perceived rail tickets as being too expensive. While the rail industry argued that low-priced tickets were available, Trainline's data analysis revealed that these cheaper tickets were primarily available well in advance of the travel date. Most customers needed to purchase tickets closer to their travel date, resulting in significantly higher prices, thus fuelling the perception of high costs.
Q. How did Trainline address the issue of perceived high ticket prices?
Trainline leveraged its data science capabilities to understand the relationship between ticket prices and the time of purchase. By identifying that buying early led to substantial savings, they developed a price-prediction tool within their app to inform customers about potential savings from booking in advance. This empowered customers to make informed decisions and save money, addressing their core concern.
Q. What were the main risks Trainline faced when implementing the price-prediction tool, and how did they mitigate them?
The main risks were: potentially alienating rail partners by exposing their pricing strategies, the possibility of revenue decline for the rail industry as a whole, and the risk of inaccurate data leading to the withdrawal of their trading license. Trainline mitigated these risks by: engaging their operational team to foster partner relationships, launching a live test with a progressive partner to analyse real-world data, ensuring a very high degree of accuracy in their price predictions, and including the executive team (including the CEO) in the viability conversation during discovery.
Q. What key changes did Trainline implement to transform from a legacy IT model to a tech-powered product innovation company?
The transformation involved prioritising engineering, product management, and design. They reduced outsourcing, invested in internal engineering talent, adopted agile release cycles, migrated to a cloud-native architecture on AWS, fostered a customer-centric engineering culture, and empowered product teams with product discovery and a test-and-learn approach.
Q. How did Trainline empower its product management team to drive innovation?
Trainline instilled a strong PM discipline at the heart of the business, moving the team away from simply fulfilling stakeholder requirements. They coached the product management team in modern product discovery techniques and emphasised the importance of a faster and stronger test-and-learn approach. Regular "Weekly Wins" meetings were introduced to foster communication, showcase insights, and encourage collaboration, making the team focused on achieving maximum value.
Q. How did Trainline utilise design to enhance product development?
Trainline invested heavily in product design, creating a team with a bias toward high-velocity qualitative testing and prototyping. Rapid user prototypes were consistently used to gather quick feedback on potential solutions across all teams. The design team played a key role in ensuring usability and creating a premium mobile experience.
Q. What role did data science play in Trainline's transformation, and what were the initial challenges?
Data science was critical in uncovering insights into customer behaviour and pricing dynamics. The initial challenges involved data being stored across various systems in inconsistent formats, with no clear data strategy. Trainline invested in building a data engineering and data science team to centralise data, improve site optimisation, and create unique ways to solve customer problems, such as identifying less crowded trains.
Q. What was the "Super Seven" and how did it influence Trainline's product vision and strategy?
The "Super Seven" referred to a set of critical, shared customer problems that cut across all territories and segments, uncovered through deep customer analysis. These problems, often occurring after the ticket purchase (e.g., missed connections, delays), shaped Trainline's product vision beyond being just a ticketing company. By focusing on solving these pain points and extending their services beyond the transaction, Trainline aimed to significantly improve the customer experience and increase customer lifetime value.
This is a summary of Trainline’s real transformation case study in “Transformed: Moving to the Operating Model”
Lessons for Business Leaders
Trainline's transformation offers valuable insights for any organisation considering a shift to the product model:
Invest in product training and coaching to build internal capability
Focus on outcomes over output by measuring business results
Build cross-functional collaboration between product, engineering, and design
Develop a strong product vision aligned with customer needs
Embrace data-driven decision making to unlock innovation
The Trainline story demonstrates that even in traditional industries, the product model can deliver exceptional value. By focusing on solving customer problems in ways that work for the business, organisations can achieve remarkable transformation.
I’m Irene Liakos. A product management and growth expert with over 2 decades of experience growing product profitably across Telco, Banking, Fintech, AI, Data, Travel, Ecommerce and more. I teach, coach and advise product managers and business leaders. Reach out to me if your products aren’t delivering the value you need for your business to grow. Let’s transform your organisation and get your teams working within the product model. You can contact me at irene@phronesisadvisory.com
Start Your Product Transformation Today
Ready to transform your organisation like Trainline did?
Give your team the foundation they need with the ICAgile Certified Product Management 2 Day Training course . As the author and facilitator of this course, I've helped teams in government, banking, telecommunications and more build the essential product thinking skills needed for successful transformation.
But training is just the beginning.
Contextual product coaching tailored to your organisation's specific challenges is what turns knowledge into results. I've guided numerous teams through the journey to the product model, helping them navigate their unique environments while implementing proven product practices.
To discuss how your organisation can achieve similar results through targeted product training and coaching, contact me at irene@phronesisadvisory.com
It is the case in many industries that the "IT department" was considered as a cost center - in comparison to the core business (Railway industry). Usually when the tech is called "IT", it means cost center, low salaries, leadership from the industry and not form the tech. Good that they changed it at Trainline, in France they are 10X better than the railway company's app.