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LMUK Builds UK's Largest Loyalty Program on IT Partnership with Infosys
Infosys used experienced software engineers at its campus in Bangalore and Chennai in India to deliver the entire project within just 14 months. They worked in conjunction with Infosys team members onsite at LMUK in London, using stringent methodologies developed over Infosys' 21-year history, (known as the Infosys Global Delivery Model), to ensure that each project is delivered with near 100% accuracy. Once the development work had been completed in India on any one project, Infosys specialists came to London to undertake functional and performance testing.
"Infosys has an excellent delivery record with LMUK," said Mark Brighton, IT Director at LMUK. "At the beginning, they were our virtual IT department and today they continue to work alongside LMUK's own IT team to provide real technical breadth and depth. Infosys' level of commitment to LMUK is second to none."
Nectar's launch
Nectar launched on time and within budget on September 16, 2002 just 14 months after the project started. Within just ten weeks of the launch the total collector base already accounted for 40% of UK households and the system was processing up to five million transactions everyday. In terms of active cardholders, Nectar overtook Air Miles within the first four weeks and Tesco Clubcard within eight weeks to become the largest loyalty program in the UK.
In line with its initial objectives, the Nectar scheme has successfully created cross-selling between its sponsors and many have found that customers are actually spending more in their stores as a result of the card:
- 75% of all Nectar collectors shop at two or more sponsors - a number which has risen dramatically since launch and is continuing to increase
- According to customer satisfaction research in October 2003, 62% of Nectar collectors claimed to have spent more at sponsors because of Nectar and 75% made a point of using at least one retail outlet because it offered Nectar points
Nectar is bringing benefits to its collectors as much as its sponsors. Over the 2003/ 04 Christmas period, for example, Nectar gave back around £60 million worth of rewards to Nectar collectors on such items as gifts from Argos, wine, DVD and video hires from Blockbuster and money off shopping. The latest developments at Nectar have been designed to encourage collectors to take increasing advantage of the scheme.
Part II: Nectar gets sweeter - complete IT upgrade to support more sponsors, makes Nectar more user-friendly
Since the launch, LMUK's ongoing objectives have been to sign up new sponsors and make the scheme increasingly attractive and user-friendly for collectors. In particular, LMUK wanted to allow users to redeem rewards and manage their points on the Nectar website to encourage them to make the most of the scheme. Working together with Infosys, it started to make major enhancements to the IT system in mid-2003 and relaunched its website in March 2004.
Infosys has boosted the power of Nectar's core system substantially and made significant architectural changes to ensure it can support the increasing use of Nectar Online and other future developments.
Infosys has also introduced new functionality to the system to encourage collectors to redeem their points more regularly.
For example:
- A 'Real-time redemption' capability is being added so that Nectar users can redeem points in-store, without the need to wait for paper vouchers. The system, currently available at Sainsbury's and reward partners Lunn Poly and Argos, raises the value of points to both user and sponsor
- Collectors can now also redeem online for a range of rewards via www.nectar.com http://www.nectar.com/ . Infosys has integrated rewards catalogue management into the overall system so that the rewards team can upload new rewards directly onto the website. A new content management system also allows staff to publish content directly to the website so that new code doesn't need to be written for each update, so reducing the cost of operations
Benefits of working with Infosys
Infosys has played and continues to play, a fundamental role in building, developing and maintaining the IT platform behind Nectar. LMUK particularly values the commitment, technical and sector expertise and sheer reliability that it has gained by working with Infosys. Using offshoring, Infosys is also able to provide its services very cost-effectively in comparison to competitors.
Simon Hawkes sums up the relationship, "Infosys has been our trusted advisors since day one. They advise on each technical development and deliver every piece of work with consistently high quality and technical flair. This level of commitment is hard to come by. But above all, they are a pleasure to work with! Testimony to our trust in Infosys and its operations is the fact that we have now offshored our points processing to India."
People generally associate offshore outsourcing with back-office applications, but we have proven that it can be equally successful for customer-facing systems - and even ones that are intrinsically British, like Nectar. Our success is due to the fact we have built company-wide trust with Infosys and committed time to managing the relationship. We have big plans to continue enhancing Nectar for our collectors and sponsors and expect Infosys to be involved at each stage."
"Technology is only an answer to a company's efficiency and productivity dreams when it is correctly and appropriately deployed against specific business needs," said Sudhir Chaturvedi, Associate Vice President and Head of Retail Practice in the UK for Infosys. "Nectar is one of the most innovative schemes ever launched in the UK and we are proud to be supporting its phenomenal success through the integrated use of our business consulting, R&D, domain competency and delivery groups."
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Infosys at the CGT Fall Conference 2008October 19-22, 2008, The Ritz-Carlton at Grande Lakes, Orlando, Florida
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"Without the help of Infosys, we would have had to postpone large projects for years. We would have suffered as a result."-Terry Morgan
CIO and Senior VP, IT
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