How Starlink transformed tech operations for Journey Beyond

Making sales to the public on location was one of the biggest problems they needed to quickly solve. Take for example the Rottnest Express ferry in Western Australia. “On that tour, there’s patchy cellular connectivity,” she says. “The problem comes when you’re processing purchases, and you can’t take payments. Often, the crew had to wait for people to come and pay later when a connection became available. So it had a significant operational impact.”

Journey Beyond took the leap to sign up with Starlink in December 2021 as it promised low-latency performance for companies like Journey Beyond, enabling applications like voice and video conferencing, online transactions, VPN access, cloud computing, and more. And with download speeds up to 200Mbps and latency as low as 20ms, businesses trust they can run operations anywhere.

This is important when you have staff living and working on a pontoon that’s 100km offshore, for instance. “On the pontoon, our crew members and hospitality staff go out for weeks at a time,” Mazumdar says. “Previously they could maybe download some Netflix content, but now they can do much more, and talk to family and friends. Before, all we had was a Sat phone which was expensive. Now, we provide huge amounts of bandwidth so the crew is happier and we can keep them engaged on official matters. Also, comms to the crew used to take a week. Now we’re on the same platform and they see it the same day as everyone else.”

Models of efficiency

During the pandemic disruption, Journey Beyond ran a standardization project that’s left it in a much better position going forward. From running six phone and seven POS systems, they tried to consolidate and today, the company runs one standard modern platform across all brands. “The office platform and the cloud platform are 95% cloud-standardized,” Mazumdar says. “We have the same contact center solution and reservations as well.  It’s taken a few years but today, they run a seamless environment across the entire business.”

They’ve also identified a lot more opportunities that were simply unavailable before the Starlink solution. For example, there are strict regulatory requirements about capturing data for people going snorkeling and scuba diving around the Great Barrier Reef. Previously, all that information was paper-based, but now they’re digitizing the whole process. “In case of an event and a claim, we see how we can make people’s experience easier and more comfortable,” she says.

Mazumdar advises up-and-coming CIOs that they need to get immersed to gain deep knowledge of all aspects of the business, and from there create a roadmap. “Sure, you need to keep the lights on and put out fires as you go, but it shouldn’t be at the expense of focusing on long-term projects,” she says. “Remember you don’t need to do everything at one time.”