“Softjourn helped us manage our growth. We were growing 30% year over year and Softjourn had a key area of expertise to provide us with tactical help.”
SecuTix: Supporting Business Growth with Integration
Softjourn helped a client manage a period of high growth by creating new functionality without breaking the bank.
ABOUT THE CLIENT:
Project:Integration of new services and testing
Industry:Event Ticketing
Client since:2018
Headquarters:Lausanne, Vaud, Switzerland
Technologies:
The Challenge
Secutix sought a dependable development partner to create Salesforce integration for their ticketing solution. Having previously collaborated on multiple projects, we were prepared to join forces once again and successfully integrate the client's system with an external ticketing system database.
The Solution
Our experienced developers worked on the plugin that will connect the two ticketing services allowing the information flow about different types of venues, events, available seats, and ticket order data.
The Result
The benefits of building a third-party plugin include:
- Direct connection with available info from external ticketing software.
- The ability for SecuTix to process more events and sell more tickets to a larger audience.
- Updates in real-time ensure accurate and valid data regarding event details such as venues and seat availability.
The Challenge
We are living in a Big Data world. Data is the new guideline that separates which businesses will succeed and those that will not—53% of companies worldwide have been adopting Big Data analytics as of 2017, up from 17% just two years before.1
These days, collecting information on your customers is an extremely important deciding factor when making strategic business decisions. However, simply collecting data is not enough—businesses also need to know how to organize, understand, and analyze the information they’re collecting.
In order to compete with other businesses that are collecting the same information, many companies are turning to integration in order to enable the movement of information from one point to another, depending on what output is desired.
Rather than leaving information siloed uselessly in one place, it can instead be passed throughout various facets of a business and put to good use. This was the goal behind a year-long project that Softjourn collaborated on with a Swiss ticketing service named SecuTix.
By integrating SecuTix’s product with many different services, Softjourn increased its data collection and also added a whole host of new functionalities, including various payment gateways.
Marc Mazzariol, VP of Product for SecuTix
SecuTix and Softjourn’s partnership began in early 2018 when Softjourn initially assisted SecuTix in integrating with an external ticketing software database owned by a UK‑based company.
SecuTix was looking for a proof of concept (POC) for a system that retrieved venue, event, and ticket availability data and then transmitted the data to SecuTix databases once a day. Additional requests were added to the project throughout the development process, including the retrieval of season tickets per venue and performance availability.
Integrating an internal system to external resources offers many benefits, a few of which are cost savings, viable off-the-shelf software, and preconfigured mechanisms to maintain a competitive edge in the marketplace.
The Solution
Upon the successful completion and demonstration of the POC for integration, SecuTix chose Softjourn for an additional project of developing Salesforce integration for SecuTix’s ticketing product to allow users to sort information collected. This required developing the integration code, testing, and Softjourn’s successful demonstration to SecuTix of the integration’s capability.
“Softjourn was very good at finding people with the right skillset, and quickly,” Mazzariol said. “And they had a good knowledge-sharing process. Turnover is to be expected in software development; there’s a lot of competition. But when we did have a personnel change, it didn’t affect [SecuTix] or our project."
“Softjourn has a pretty good knowledge-sharing process, even when they change people,” he added. “They handled onboarding new people well and fast, which [SecuTix] appreciated.”
The Benefits
The benefits of building a third-party plugin include:
- Direct connection with available info from external ticketing software.
- Ability for SecuTix to process more events and sell more tickets to a larger audience.
- Updates in real-time that ensure accurate and valid data regarding event details such as venues and seat availability
The benefits of writing a Salesforce plugin include:
- Secure connection and authentication to the Salesforce platform with OAuth2 and secure transference of contact data via REST API.
- Consistent and timely synchronization of data between SecuTix and Salesforce systems.
- SecuTix customers using Salesforce CRM will now have user profiles updated with all info from the SecuTix server.
Phase I: Integration with UK-based company's software
The integration with the UK‑based company's ticketing system was a standalone separate project completed in a couple of weeks. The goal was for SecuTix’s ticketing product to be able to transact with external ticketing software, read data through the API, and transfer that information to the SecuTix platform.
The plugin Softjourn wrote provides a connection between the two ticketing services, allowing the transference of information about an event and venue, available seats, best available seat recommendation, and ticket order completion.
There is also a synchronization feature to read a UK‑based company's database on a regular basis to see new events available and add them to the SecuTix database. The project was implemented as a POC to show its feasibility for other future integrations.
Phase II: Contributing to Building a Salesforce plugin for SecuTix
Customer data is the key to creating a personalized experience, which is, these days, the best way to rise above the noise created by the current industrial revolution. Customer relationship management (CRM) systems as an industry are expected to reach more than $80 billion in revenues by 2025.3
After the success of the initial project, SecuTix met with Softjourn regarding a second project: developing a Salesforce plugin for SecuTix’s ticketing product. The plugin needed to authenticate the connection to the Salesforce platform using OAuth2 protocol and be able to transfer contact data via REST API.
Using the OAuth2 framework, the plugin would connect with Salesforce and transmit client profile information such as phone numbers, billing addresses, titles, photos, and more between both Salesforce and the SecuTix platform. Thus, both systems would be updated in a synchronized and simultaneous manner.
With the plugin, SecuTix platform users can ensure the information in one system is accurate with the details in their in-house CRM system, thanks to a live-data feed from the SecuTix system.
Payment Gateway Development
Between February 2018 and May 2019, Softjourn wrote code for an additional 24 plugins and integrations to assist SecuTix in achieving omnichannel payment in its ticketing platform.
This allowed SecuTix to accept payment through multiple payment gateways, especially those connected to audiences in various physical locations.
Throughout this process, Softjourn stood up an additional team of automated quality assurance (AQA) testers, who wrote about 1,000 testing scripts that were then transferred to the team in the Ukraine who automated them for repeatable quality assurance of the work provided to SecuTix.
The plugin integrations and QA that Softjourn developed and provided for SecuTix over that time period include but are not limited to the following payment and software systems:
- MasterPass
- Redsys
- Softbank
- TSYS Payment Solutions
- SaferPay
- Ingenico NPS
- BluePay
- DataTrans Solutions
- Adyen
The Result
Upon completion of all projects, Softjourn assisted SecuTix in offering a greater variety of events and venues by enabling them to pull from third-party software.
Softjourn also assisted its partner company in growing the number of payment options it offered, which provides greater customer service for both current and new audiences as SecuTix continues to grow globally. All information can be collected, sorted, and analyzed in SalesForce via the plugin that Softjourn developed so that as new information is pulled together, it can be made use of.
“I get a lot of [development] offers,” Mazzariol said. “Most of them say, ‘we’re great developers.’ What made Softjourn stand out was their experience in ticketing, specifically. [SecuTix] wanted to try someone who had that experience, so we decided to go with Softjourn.”
Mazzariol commented on the quick and efficient work provided and Softjourn’s capability to provide resources that fit SecuTix’s particular needs. Contact us to give life to your ticketing ideas!
Partnership & Recognition
