New generation of cloud-based commercial back office delivers modernization, resilience, and cost savings.

Cognizant and Amazon Web Services (AWS) have completed the first phase of implementing Cognizant’s Digital Tolling Solution for Elizabeth River Crossings (ERC) in Virginia. ERC operates and maintains the tunnels connecting the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth, the MLK Expressway, and approximately 51 miles of highway in Virginia under a 58-year P3 agreement with the Virginia Department of Transportation. On average, about 105,000 vehicles travel through these facilities each day.

As customers transitioned to all electronic tolling, ERC’s legacy, on-premises technology could not keep pace, limiting their ability to analyze data in real time to get insights and act on them. This in turn adversely affected their customer satisfaction, revenue recognition, and ability to roll out new offerings.

To meet their needs, ERC engaged Cognizant for an end-to-end digital transformation project to migrate and modernize their data center and back office operations. Once all of ERC’s applications had been successfully migrated to Amazon Web Services (AWS), Cognizant undertook the challenging task of developing an entirely new commercial back office – all built on cloud services like AWS Lambda, Amazon DynamoDB, and others.

The result is Cognizant’s Digital Tolling Solution, which has delivered an improved customer experience for ERC’s stakeholders through the contact center using omnichannel communications, and providing enhanced account, vehicle, payment, and dispute management.

The Cognizant Digital Tolling Solution leverages advanced artificial intelligence (AI), self-service, and cognitive capabilities to deliver omnichannel customer service built on a modern, secure microservices architecture. The Digital Tolling Solution also provides an accurate 360-degree view on any toll transaction at any given point of time by providing comprehensive, real-time information, including customer information, vehicle details, payment behavior, and payment patterns. This end-to-end real-time visibility empowers toll operators to eliminate inefficiencies and redundancies and identify what actions should be taken and when.

“Modernizing our legacy systems has been essential, particularly this year,” said David C. Sullivan, Chief Executive Officer, ERC. “Moving to a cloud-based solution enabled us to continue operations without interruption through the pandemic and ensured that we can serve our customers much more efficiently now and in the future. We look forward to our continued work with Cognizant and AWS.”

“The benefits of consolidating disparate systems and providing a single solution via the cloud cannot be understated,” said Saurabh Mehta, Business Unit Head, Manufacturing, Logistics, Energy and Utilities, Cognizant. “Beyond streamlining processes and services, Cognizant’s Digital Tolling Solution enables our clients to innovate and improve operational agility, ultimately providing better quality service to their customers.”

“By modernizing legacy architectures and moving to cloud-first strategies and offerings, AWS Partners such as Cognizant can help organizations like ERC better serve their customers, and provide greater visibility and a more comprehensive view into the data that really drives their business,” said Phil Silver, Leader, SLG Transportation, Public Sector, Amazon Web Services, Inc. “AWS congratulates ERC and Cognizant, and we welcome this transition into tolling and other transportation verticals.”