Johannesburg, 14 Nov 2008
Rewardsco is a leading provider of outsourced customer rewards and incentive programme operations. In addressing the nuances of the South African market, the company found that no off-the-shelf software would meet its requirements and has used Oracle Development Tools to create its own solution based on the Oracle Database.
Rewardsco Contact Centres managing director Jayson Naidoo says the company runs incentive and customer rewards programmes on behalf of clients.
This means taking on the identity of the client so that Rewardsco is effectively invisible to the customer,” he says. “We provide a full range of services including procurement of rewards, tracking and delivery of redeemed rewards, management of customer information, development of rules engines to process points and manage customer tiering, and all the other services required for the successful running of programmes.”
Naidoo says each client is different, but rewards programmes share conceptual commonality, allowing Rewardsco to develop an application that covers the fundamental bases for customers and that can then be customised for their individual needs. Customisation normally occurs around the membership criteria, points management engine and unique systems integration to automate as much of the information flow as possible. Several templates to fast track these complex structures have been built using the Oracle toolset.
It is a dynamic environment we work in, so the software must be dynamic too,” he comments. “It needs to empower our agents to provide the highest quality communication exchange with a focus on first call resolution. We chose the Oracle Development Suite for the development of the application, which uses the Oracle Database.”
He says Oracle was selected for the robustness of its technology and the fact that it provides truly enterprise-class solutions.
Most of our clients are blue-chip companies and large enterprises. We needed a database and application platform that would match their capabilities and that has a strong reputation in the market for quality, reliability and security,” explains Naidoo. “Clients trust us with their corporate identities and valuable customer databases, so we need to offer them infrastructure that instils confidence. They are comfortable with Oracle and respect it in the market.”
According to Naidoo, another attraction to Oracle was its ease of integration and the high availability of integration tools for the platform. For example, Rewardco needed to integrate its PABX system into the application and this was simple to accomplish with Oracle's tools.
"We are about to launch a new contact centre operation to accommodate the growth of our business,” adds Naidoo. “And will undoubtedly continue down the path with Oracle as we expand into this new facility.”
"Rewardsco has leveraged the Oracle platform to create its own, dynamic application," commented Oracle's Director, Andrew Krause. "In this way, the company has gained the advantages of both a custom application and having an enterprise-class software foundation. Oracle looks forward to working with the organisation in the future as its business grows."
He says the business favours Oracle solutions and will use them wherever possible in the future because of their proven reliability, configurability and ease of integration.
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