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 their data collection and also added a whole host of new functionalities, including various payment gateways.
“Softjourn helped us manage our growth,” said Marc Mazzariol, VP of Product for SecuTix. “We were growing 30% year over year. Softjourn had a key area of expertise to provide us tactical help.”
The Need
System integration has become an essential part of the agile business environment.
The system integration market size is projected to exceed $450 billion by 2024;2 system integration enables a robust infrastructure management, leading to an improvement in productivity, decrease in data redundancy, and the maintenance of data integrity.
SecuTix and Softjourn’s partnership began in early 2018, when Softjourn initially assisted SecuTix in integrating with an external ticketing software database owned by 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 into 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.
Upon the successful completion and demonstration of the POC, 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 Solution
Phase I: Integration with UK‑based company's software
The integration with 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 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 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.
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.
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 is 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.
The Benefits
The benefits of writing a Salesforce plugin include:
- Secure connection and authentication to 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 SecuTix server.
Additional Projects
Digital payments, whether by debit card, credit card, digital wallet, or some other form of payment type, are growing in popularity all over the world. More and more it benefits companies to offer a wide number of options for their customers in order to encourage a successful transaction. But offering multiple types of payments requires multiple payment gateways, software, and hardware that require regular maintenance, updates, and/or upgrades, which can get especially tricky when spread over a wide geographic region. Thankfully, Softjourn has much experience in handling payment gateways.
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
Project Achievements
Upon completion of all projects, Softjourn had assisted SecuTix in offering a greater variety of events and venues by enabling them to pull from third-party software. Softjourn also assisted their 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 wrote, 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 need.
“Softjourn has a good reputation in the industry, and they were priced well,” Mazzariol said.
Headquartered in Silicon Valley, California, with R&D Centers in Ukraine and Poland, Softjourn, Inc. is a global technology services provider that finds custom solutions for our clients’ toughest challenges. Our 200+ employees skillfully evaluate, identify, and plan innovative, creative solutions. We become a trusted partner by proactively collaborating on all design, build out, and deployment. Contact us to give life to your ideas!
