From the list of frequently asked questions…
Consider following example:
Let’s assume we have customer action – “purchase” with a set of attributes: product, category,
price, amount, total sum, date of purchase, etc. A customer purchased two items:
- product – X, category – commodity goods, price – 100 dollars, quantity – 5 items, total sum – 500 dollars, purchase date – 1/1/2010 11:00.
- product Y, category – other goods, price – 200 dollars, quantity – 1 item, total sum – 200 dollars, purchase date – 1/1/2010 11:00.
I.e. for one purchase there are 2 records created in the system.
It is obvious how to create reward rules for buying product X, or for buying a product from category “other goods” or for a purchasing items with cost more then 150 dollars.
But sometimes it is required to assign bonus points if total purchase sum is larger then N dollars. In this case the product, its category and quantity will be ignored.
What to do in this case?
If you can simplify the processing rules – send only one record representing the total purchase with attributes: total sum, purchase date. In our case it will be following action:
- total sum – 700 dollars, date of purchase – 1/1/2010 11:00.
And create a reward rule depending on total purchase sum.
So, with some preliminary data processing it is possible to solve vast majority of such problems without changing the PointLoyalty Manager system.
From time to time we get requests to add administrator console to have control over multiple clients having their own loyalty programs, i.e. to add master-administrator mode.
At this time we think there is a better way to handle such problem. If you want to act as a loyalty program operator – you can create multiple individual loyalty offers for your partners using a single account in the system.
In this case you will be able to create offers with separate settings for each partner (action attributes, etc) and will be able to get reports for each partner separately and combined reports for all partners.
With this scheme only you can create loyalty offers, but that’s what you need if you want to control the process of creating partner loyalty offers.
If you need that your partners could create loyalty offers by themselves and you only get reports on every partner – make several accounts (one for each partner). The task of creating additional reports we will perform as a customization services.
In case of local installation of PointLoyalty Manager on your servers you will have access to all system data and will not experience such problems at all.
Please contact our sales department and we will be able to find convenient solution for your needs sales@pointloyalty.com.
While testing the integration with e-commerce systems and after analyzing feedback from our customers who also do integration with PointLoyalty Manager we decided to extend our external access interfaces (REST API, web services). New features will help simplify integration works. We will publish new Java and PHP libraries in a couple of weeks and update system’s server part. New libraries will be backward compatible of course.
Sometimes we get requests to introduce same REST API for loyalty programs and offers management and to provide a way for autonomous processing without human intervention. At this point in time we don’t intend to extend the API in this direction.
Reasons:
- Programs and offes are relatively stable. Once you have defined rules it is unlikely you want to change them frequently. There is no necessity to dynamically create or change them.
- Besides, users can get confused in all different kinds of rules and programs we have in our system (simplicity vs. versatility). In our PointLoyalty Flash GUI we simplified a lot of things for loyalty program managers, but it is really hard to provide simple and powerful external API for this task.
We don’t want our users to get confused – use our rich Flash client to define your bonus offers and you will not get lost in a multitude of options our system provides.
Development news.
We finished development of a plugin for e-commerce solution http://www.konakart.com.
The following functionality is implemented:
- Passing shop client information into our bonus processing system PointLoyalty Manager (optionally, when there is a need to create loyalty offers based on member attributes).
- Automatic creation of accounts in Member Console application. Every authorized internet shop client is able to see earned bonus points.
- Administrator panel with plugin settings.
- Customization, tuning of error reports.
The plugin will be available for free-of-charge use after testing and preparing documentation.
We develop the plugin to demonstrate how easy it is to integrate any system with PointLoyalty online services and to popularize our product.
In our opinion KonaKart is one of most advanced eCommerce solutions implemented in Java on the market these days.
We already described how to place «Member Console» widget on your Company web site – please see an example.
We also wrote about using our utility for tuning the application appearance (colors, backgrounds, fonts) – see widget design customization.
To make things easier we put our widget with custom design settings on external website as an example – please see it here.
More information on the Member Console you can get on description page.
Once you have questions – consult our support – support@pointloyalty.com.
We have discovered recently an interesting view on advantages of using SaaS software – see article «SaaS v. on-premises Software: Which One is More Green?».
The author claims (with numbers and calculations) that using SaaS solutions in your business help you reduce global energy consumption.
We never thought about this aspect of on-demand computing but we found it encouraging – we do useful things in terms of our global environment protection!
A little bit of self-promotion 
The last news posted in our blog covered the new possibilities of PointLoyalty Manager System.
Development and support of Loyalty program system for bonus calculation as SaaS tool has been and remains the main activity of our Company.
Besides this we always have been and currently continue the development of custom software both in marketing sphere of Loyalty programs and other related spheres. Our Company has sufficient resources to carry out such tasks.
Thereby, even if currently you do not plan the implementation of bonus systems in your business, but you like the design and presentation of our PointLoyalty Manager product, it may well be that we are able to help you in questions of other type of automation.
For all questions of cooperation, please, contact the Commercial Department of the Company - sales@pointloyalty.com
Talking to the audience, different from the representatives of trading companies, at best we face with the difference in terminology when discussing the encouragement systems of customers. In worst case we face with the initial lack of understanding of why the company needs to encourage and keep its customers.
Terminology
If the representatives of trading organizations set the problem of loyalty programs creation and use exactly this term, then in other areas the given terminology is not established. Bonus systems, systems of prize points calculation, encouragement systems, systems of customers rewards…..Everything, but not the loyalty programs; although, as we have mentioned before, the difference in terminology doesn’t affect the essence of creation of such programs.
Usage
If the representatives of trading organizations understand the importance of encouragement systems’ creation, then for the owners of other business trends the necessity of such a system is not initially obvious. Thus, acquaintance with our product will help not only to meet the exciting needs, but also to form the specific market – at least you have something new to offer to your customers.
In general
Always and in every scheme:
- We have a customer
- We have the rules of his/her encouragement
- We have a scheme of bonus calculation according to set rules.
Thereby, if you are interested in creation of your customer’s encouragement system – you can be sure that our system is created for you also. Well, you can try at least And do not be confused by the unusual terminology, you can always use your own when designing the individual templates and rules.
For all questions on possibility to use our application for your Company, please, contact the support service – support@pointloyalty.com
REST / Web services
1) SSL support for REST API.
2) the methods of creation of loyalty program users’ accounts have been added.
Now the owners of loyalty programs may:
- provide their users with logins/passwords — offline business.
- create accounts automatically – online business.
User console (the system of notification of loyalty programs users)
1) It is given the example of user console placement on the site of an owner of the program.
2) It is added the possibility of full customization of «User console» for customer’s needs
- Support of Company’s logotype.
- Support of application’s form (CSS).
- Support service’ address has been changed.
(See Pointloyalty Manager “Registration page”)
3) the utility for adjustment of application’s form has been developed
4) The detailed description of integration process with “User console” has been added. The given description contains the detailed examples and recommendations on the application’ using.
http://www.pointloyalty.com/member_console.html
To resume — the possibility of full integration of widget “User console” with your sites has been added.
The future plans — to provide with plugins for integration with support systems of e-commerce.
In our previous post we described how to integrate “Member Console” with your web application. There is one more option for better integration – JavaScript callbacks. Following callbacks are invoked by the Member Console:
- onLoad (no parameters)
- onLogin (no parameters)
- onLogout (no parameters)
- onError (optional parameter – error reason)
- onLoginError (optional parameter – error reason)
On any integration issue please contact – support@pointloyalty.com
