Implementing and customizing the Open Loyalty software for a US petrol loyalty program pioneer

Project summary

Drop Tank, a US leader in petrol loyalty programs, decided to seek out a high-tech loyalty software provider with a customizable loyalty engine that works in a multi-tenant model and is easily deployed in the cloud. In the course of their search, Drop Tank came across Open Loyalty among other solutions, and chose Open Loyalty as the foundation of its future loyalty engine. By Open Loyalty’s invitation, Divante, our partner, also took part in the project to help with implementing the Open Loyalty software. In the end, the project was a great success for all parties involved.

Key results

• Drop Tank received a fully scalable, cloud-based solution built with Kubernetes.
• Open Loyalty architecture was implemented to run alongside Drop Tank’s existing Oracle database.
• Countless functionalities such as extended customer profiles, support for different time zones and custom fraud detection were built into the engine.

About Drop Tank

Drop Tank is a household name within the loyalty industry, specializing in gas station loyalty technology and working in partnership with countless world-leading brands.

Due to its growing partnerships with renowned global brands and therefore a strong reputation to live up to, Drop Tank found itself in need of loyalty software that would be able to bear the weight of its clients’ needs.

Following a series of experiences with SaaS loyalty products that failed to satisfy all of Drop Tank’s criteria and allow it to scale its business at the desired pace, the company decided to renew its search. Shortly thereafter, Drop Tank came upon Open Loyalty, which soon proved to be just what the company needed all along, namely:

• Autonomy & high level of customisation
• Scalability
• Multitenancy
• A software that would co-exist with Oracle Cloud
  

What challenges was Drop Tank facing?

For many years now, Drop Tank has enjoyed a high standing within the fuel loyalty industry, helping both fuel and convenience store providers reap the benefits of high-quality loyalty solutions. Its philosophy has also always been simple - do right by their customers, take responsibility and never stop learning.

Over time, Drop Tank’s scope had expanded to include a range of new products, solutions and applications. These proved to be highly successful among customers, and were consequently sought after by major energy companies, helping to expand its client portfolio.

With a scale as big as Drop Tank’s and multiple channels such as pay at pump and mobile apps to account for, the project required a highly flexible and scalable omnichannel-ready loyalty engine.

As demand grew among its increasing partner base, it became ever so important for Drop Tank to change things up and find a loyalty engine that was efficient, scalable and provided them with the core capabilities needed to run their products smoothly alongside their existing Oracle databases.

Prior to coming across Open Loyalty, Drop Tank partnered with two different providers, none of which allowed the company to “have it all”. In one way or another, their growth and business autonomy were hampered, which meant they couldn’t compete at the level they wanted to.

What Drop Tank needed was a complete game-changer. Luckily for them, Open Loyalty had been hard at work developing  software that enabled businesses to enjoy the very functionalities Drop Tank was after.

Here’s how Timothy Miller, the company CTO, describes the conundrum the company was facing prior to learning of Open Loyalty:

"Before Open Loyalty, we’ve had two passes at loyalty engines. Both of them were SaaS products we couldn’t control or update as we saw fit, which was key to growing our business and being able to compete. We needed a loyalty engine that would allow us to do these things, which is how we landed on Open Loyalty."

‍Timothy Miller
Drop Tank

Following an internal test, Drop Tank reached out to us to discuss both the software and the potential partnership in more depth, and to find out whether the collaboration would indeed prove to be the answer to their dilemmas.

After a few adjustments on our part, such as building multitenancy into our product and making sure Drop Tank’s Oracle databases could comfortably co-exist alongside the Open Loyalty engine, we were good and raring to go!

"The fact that Open Loyalty listened to our needs from the get-go and decided to make huge changes to their software to meet our needs was huge for us. It truly spoke volumes about who Open Loyalty is as a company and how it does things."

‍Timothy Miller
Drop Tank