Northern Rail

University of York: Summer Internship Programme

Northern Rail operates the franchise to run train services in the North of England. Headquartered in York, it employs 4500 people, making it the largest train operator in the UK.

Second year Sociology student Matthew Freckelton joined Northern Rail’s dynamic and creative marketing and product development team as part of The University of York’s 2009 Summer Internship programme. During that time, Northern Rail was undertaking a systems upgrade and commissioning a new customer relations database, and in the context of this, Matthew was tasked with working on a project to identify all the different pockets of data throughout the Company’s extensive business operations and assess how these different datasets could be most efficiently used, and how best they could be incorporated into the new database.

Matthew initially identified the multiple data sources, then spent time analysing the data, visiting different parts of the company and talking to a diverse range of employees to understand how the different data sources currently worked, and how they might fit together in the future. This provided him with a unique overview of the whole business.

The internship culminated in the production and presentation of a report to senior marketing and customer relations executives identifying and clarifying where the different pockets of data lay and how they might best be utilised in the future. During his internship, Matthew also produced a flowchart which identified every point at which a customer comes into contact with Northern Rail during their customer experience, which will be referred to by the marketing team in the future.

Lisa Woodley, Revenue Development Manager said “Matthew’s report will be helpful for customer relations within Northern Rail as well as the wider business and will be a useful reference point for us to refer back to once the internship has ended.”