Flexible and Extensible Loyalty Points Processing Platform
One key aspect of a new generation of transaction processing systems is the ability to flexibly launch new programs, features & marketing campaigns across a variety of card types & customer groups. There could be 5 to 6 different card types per bank with multiple spending rules per card. On top of that there are various ad-hoc campaigns that can be run concurrently at a time. There are close to 30 campaigns a month.
The challenge of this project is to wrangle with the problem of processing massive spend datasets coming in daily and the ability to flexibly launch a new product for a given SCIS Bank. The flexibility and extensibility of the platform can lead to reduced turnover time for the customer and improved productivity for the company.The goal is to develop a platform prototype that would provide flexibility and extensibility to launch new programs and campaigns.
Project Objectives
1. Design a flexible and extensible architecture for launching new programs and campaigns.
2. Optimise the application and services used to scale and support massive transaction processing.
3. Secure the application design
4. Automate the system integration and deployment
Student consultants worked closely with AscendaLoyalty representatives to devise the following for the prototype they developed
1. Understand how the transaction data from banks are formatted from the sponsor.
2. Understand how points/miles/cashback is processed and campaigns are structured from the sponsor.
3. Design and prototype the application codes to integrate with the API calls provided by the bank and loyalty programs.
4. Design and develop the software qualities of the platform required by the sponsor.
Outcomes
1. Students can work on real-world technical issues, identify and translate industry sponsor needs into system requirements. They are required to identify suitable technologies and solutions, balance the technical and business trade-offs, and realize a practical system.
2. Students explore the usage of Amazon Web Services (AWS) essential services and software development best practices to design the prototype to address critical design challenges.
3. Provide business benefits to the company and improved customer experiences with the quick launch of new campaigns.
4. Provide business benefits to customers with a secure design that confidentially handles their personal data.
5. Provide technical benefits to the company in automated feature deployment to increase productivity and reduce human errors. Application features that are manually tested and deployed take hours and can be reduced to minutes.
6. The sponsor can further explore the prototype solution with the GitHub source code provided.
"The project was done to spark interest in loyalty as an industry as well as sharing the importance of software qualities such as robustness, extensibility and flexibility in real life. The students not only demonstrated that they care about these qualities deeply, they also took it to the next level by thinking about user experiences and putting themselves in the customers’ shoes while coming up with the design." - Ascenda Loyalty representative
"This SMU-X module provides the students firsthand experiences in solving a real-world technical issue by designing and developing a technical prototype solution. During the solution design, they learn to manage the stakeholder's concerns, research new technologies and technological know-how, balance trade-off to design decisions and apply logical thinking skills to better craft their prototype solution. As the course coordinator, I have learned the latest trends and technical needs that prevail in the industry." - Assistant Professor Ouh Eng Lieh, faculty instructor, SMU School of Computing and Information Systems
"The problem statement given was extremely realistic and allowed us to try to deploy an environment that is required by the client. The project sponsor gave very constructive feedback and suggestions during both the proposal and final presentation. They provided very insightful feedback about our project and were genuinely interested from the questions they asked. It really aided in our learning of stakeholder management and communication." - SMU student