The methods department has expertise in the design and performance of the transport offer, with implementation to meet service quality indicators, operation optimization and profitability levels. Dashboards, with reports and key indicators, allow monitoring and confirmation of the transport offers deployed. Before anything, the department produces steering and control data. The added value of this department can be optimized, from upstream to downstream, by favouring a pre-established reporting model (production plan), to make the necessary (and contractual) information flow more fluidly and to have data accessible to all mobility stakeholders.

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Like any industry (in this case data production), one of the key performance factors is the planning of actions, with an upstream assessment of objectives, needs, usage modes, issues, details, and allocated resources (in time, human and therefore financial). The supplier must meet the indicators predefined in the contractual commitment, with all the additional data demonstrating the relevance of its activities. However, specific requests by the client, not programmed (analysis by time slot, study on a particular bus line...), could be engaged after validation of the objectives and an evaluation of the necessary costs. The methods departments produce a lot of data, but each processing and analysis represents an investment, an upstream reflection, data qualification, controls, algorithm development...

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Forecasting, planning and cost evaluation of data production/processing are one of the client/supplier issues. For them, everything must be done to control the (numerous) requests for custom data production, by proposing automatic processes, data models (with flexible formats for simple and fast complementary investigations). The challenge is to free up time for refining knowledge, research and testing of innovations and new solutions. Data is central to imagining tomorrow's mobility, and the design and methods department is an expert in this field.