Customer case LMN & TeamValue (Realtime API platform)

‍AirMiles, the most famous loyalty program in the Netherlands.Save points at companies such as Booking.com, Shell, Mastercard, Praxis and Albert Heijn. With over 3.3 million users, Air Miles is the largest savings program in the Netherlands.

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The result:

Bringing the real-time API platform live achieved the following results:

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• (Currently) 1.5 million requests per day, of which > 95% are handled within 500ms.
• 100% of savings transactions are successfully processed towards the SAP platform.

• The platform, including the 15 APIs, have a proven uptime of 99.9%.

• Savings transactions are processed in real time, allowing savers to redeem their Air Miles immediately.
• A secure, standardized and market-based connection for partners. With an Azure Secure Score of >90%, the platform scores many times higher than the market average of approximately 80% in terms of security.

• Because all operational actions on the platform are automated, partners can be onboarded within five minutes and start connecting their applications to the platform.

• By laying down a multitenant SaaS architecture that uses scalable (serverless) Azure services, fixed costs have dropped significantly. More is paid only when the "load" on the platform increases.

• Finally, LMN's team is trained in such a way that they can properly maintain the platform and fix the most common errors themselves.

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Whereas previously savings partners had to upload the Air Miles daily to LMN's central SAP environment, that is a thing of the past with the new API platform. TeamValue developed this solution together with LMN's team. And with success. The Air Miles are now credited and debited in real time and it is possible to view the current status of your balance at any time of the day.

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The development to a real-time environment did not go without a hitch. Unfortunately, LMN's regular IT partner and initial developer of theAPI platform was unable to successfully complete the project, which is why LMN engaged TeamValue.

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The challenge for TeamValue was based on the previously developed and unsuccessful API platform where:

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• The "single-tenant" platform was rolled out for each partner. This led to high costs because it meant that each partner had its own hardware, infrastructure and maintenance costs. The more partners, the higher the costs eventually became.
• The complexity and cost from management increased tremendously due to container-based architecture.
• LMN had a high dependency with hiring outside specialists to manage the container platforms. This was both cost and organizationally undesirable.
• Performance was underperforming, due to the use of containers. Every request that came in had a negative impact on performance. Even with little "load" on the platform, signals towards partners were not getting through.
• Misuse with identities and partners became possible due to the non-watertight authentication and authorization mechanism. The security of the platform was inadequate.
• Finally, LMN was not kept informed of progress, development and (design) decisions made.

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Following these findings, LMN approached TeamValue to conduct an assessment - based on the current situation - and challenge the existing solution on cost, performance and security. Following the assessment, LMN decided to give TeamValue the confidence to roll out and successfully deliver the project.

Joost-Jan: The team was able to put down a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) platform in two months using scalable Cloud-Native Azure solutions.

Transition from current architecture to new target architecture in the Cloud

Joost-Jan: ''First of all, we put together a BizDevOps team for this project. This included a Product Owner with a number of functional and operational specialists from LMN combined with my role as Azure Solutions Architect and a Cloud Solution Developer from TeamValue.''

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''The first step was to create a new target architecture. Based on this architecture, we were able to develop a plan that allowed us to migrate the links from the current architecture to the new target architecture in the Cloud. The next step became creating the backlog and logging all features and capabilities for the platform to be developed. With the desired end goal in mind, we then prioritized the backlog and divided it into short iterations (one-week sprints). Why we chose to do this? To gain trust from our stakeholders and deliver value to the organization right from day one. In doing so, LMN's Product Owner was also at the wheel for full visibility of the development and its rollout. 100% transparent. Exactly what we love." In two months, the BizDevOps team was able to put down a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) platform using scalable Cloud-Native Azure solutions. The goal of the MVP was to realize the capability that would allow real-time retrieval of a saver's balance. This development enabled the first partner to make adjustments to its IT infrastructure and connect to the new platform.

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In the following six months, the platform was fully rolled out and all desired functionalities were developed and put into production. By now, all savings partners are connected to the platform and are able to spend Air Miles in real time.

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A sparring session?

Do you have a similar challenge? And do you need help with that or would you like a free sparring session? We are happy to think along with you. Please contact Hans Borkent.

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[email protected]

+31 (0)6 46 00 31 71