Aeroplan

Customer Case Study
Aeroplan
Next-Gen Loyalty Marketing
Solution:
Internet Commerce
Product:
BEA WebLogic Integration
BEA AquaLogic Commerce
Services
Industry:
Loyalty Marketing
Business Challenge
Diversify mileage and reward partnerships to expand the loyalty program by
appealing to a broader range of consumer preferences.
Solution
SOA built on BEA WebLogic Integration provides an open, scalable and reliable
business platform for growth. BEA AquaLogic Commerce Services facilitates
innovative partnerships and helps provide a compelling customer experience.
Results
Aeroplan is growing rapidly. The company has five million active members and
relationships with over 60 business partners. During peak periods, Aeroplan’s
consumer portal supports nearly 4000 concurrent sessions.
Customer brief
Aeroplan is Canada's premier loyalty marketing company, dedicated to developing and
executing programs that engage the loyalty of its prestigious membership. Aeroplan’s
millions of members earn Aeroplan Miles through a network of more than 60 world-class
partners, representing more than 100 brands in the financial, retail and travel sectors.
Miles may be redeemed for flight and non-flight rewards. Flight rewards can be used with
dozens of airlines serving more than 850 destinations worldwide. In 2006, more than
1.4 million round-trip flight rewards were issued. Aeroplan's roster of non-flight rewards
includes over 400 exciting specialty, merchandise and experiential rewards, as well as
hotel stays and car rentals.
Business process challenge
Aeroplan was established by Air Canada as a loyalty program for the airline’s frequent flyers
in 1984. Over the next two decades, Aeroplan evolved into much more than a program for
earning and redeeming reward travel. In 2002, Aeroplan was spun off from Air Canada and
became an autonomous company with a business model that focused on diversification.
Customer Case Study Aeroplan
The company wanted to attract a broader range of consumers, offer more ways
to earn miles, and expand its business partnerships to provide a greater variety
of rewards.
To execute this strategy, Aeroplan needed a technology infrastructure with the flexibility,
scalability and robust commerce capability to support countless consumer preferences,
a diverse range of products and services, and a transaction volume that is orders of
magnitude larger than when Aeroplan was solely a frequent flyer program.
“Our business was changing dramatically and we needed a business platform that
would allow us to turn all of our creative ideas into reality,” said Rémi Lafrance, Director
of Technology—Architecture, Strategy & Operations at Aeroplan. “Loyalty programs
have become so sophisticated and competitive. The keys to success are being
innovative, responding quickly to consumer preferences, and continually adding value
so that customers have a reason to remain loyal.”
Solution
Aeroplan considered a number of options and ultimately selected BEA WebLogic
Integration as the backbone for a revamped infrastructure and BEA AquaLogic
Commerce Services for storefront and back-office operations. The infrastructure is
based on a service-oriented architecture (SOA).
“We evaluated platforms based on robustness, price, and a real-world proof of
concept,” said Lafrance. “BEA demonstrated to us that it was the right choice to
address our business requirements. The feature set, reliability and support for open
standards were very impressive. It is truly a business enabler. In addition, BEA
consultants took the time to understand our business. They provided smart ideas
and helped us craft a solution that aligned with our specific needs.”
Within the SOA, WebLogic Integration brings together transactional applications,
multiple data sources, applications from mileage and rewards partners, and over
50 Web services. WebLogic Integration orchestrates the interaction between these
systems and applications, facilitates the timely and reliable movement of messages
across the infrastructure, and ensures that Web services can be invoked and
consumed as necessary to support customer queries and transactions. Examples
of Web services supported by WebLogic Integration include “mileage balance” and
“product detail.”
Another business-critical component of the new infrastructure is BEA AquaLogic
Commerce Services, which supports the consumer storefront that is used by Aeroplan
members who want to redeem miles. AquaLogic Commerce Services integrates with
operational systems and Web applications to help improve the effectiveness of the
store and enhance the customer experience with capabilities such as dynamic page
creation, customer self-service, inventory tracking, and a comprehensive catalog.
BEA AquaLogic Commerce Services helps Aeroplan simplify the customer shopping
2
Customer Case Study Aeroplan
experience, maximize the efficiency of store management, and flexibly connect to
enterprise systems by leveraging commerce storefront, commerce management, and
commerce integration services.
Aeroplan has implemented BEA AquaLogic Commerce Services so that non-flight
reward partners are able to update inventory status and expose product details and
images to the Aeroplan catalog without any Aeroplan intervention, improving efficiency
and availability. And BEA AquaLogic Commerce Services is integrated with Aeroplan’s
redemption and transaction systems so that members can quickly see if they have
enough miles for a specific award (and calculate how many miles they would need to
purchase to cover a mileage shortfall), and move through the checkout process.
Among the unique aspects of Aeroplan’s business, and an important competitive
differentiator, is the ability for members to redeem miles for hotel rooms and car rentals in
real time and completely online. No other loyalty program offers that type of redemption.
“It is a tribute to BEA AquaLogic Commerce Services that we’re able to integrate with
travel service providers to offer our members such valuable rewards,” said Lafrance.
“Car rentals and hotel bookings can be complex transactions involving real-time
inventory and price management. By eliminating the big technical obstacles, AquaLogic
Commerce Services helps us make travel planning faster, easier and more convenient
for our members.”
The BEA solution is running in a Red Hat Enterprise Linux environment. The primary
database system is MySQL.
Results
“The robust feature set in BEA AquaLogic Commerce Services has helped us to
diversify our product offerings, expand our business partnerships and eliminate some
barriers to revenue growth,” said Lafrance. “We’ve become more effective at converting
customer contact into revenue. Our business has increased significantly and we have a
strong foundation for future commerce growth.”
Today, Aeroplan has over five million active members. The company works with 60
mileage and reward partners. In the past two years, key commercial partners have
been added, including major retail brands such as Bell Canada and Imperial Oil (Esso),
adding significant value for Aeroplan members. The Aeroplan consumer website
delivers more than 20 million page views per month. During peak periods, Aeroplan’s
online store processes 2-3 transactions per second and maintains 3000-4000
concurrent sessions.
“The BEA-powered infrastructure gives us limitless scalability and extremely high
performance,” said Lafrance. “This helps enhance the customer experience and has
contributed to the channel shift we’re now seeing. Not only is this very cost-effective,
it enables further expansion of our online capabilities.”
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Customer Case Study Aeroplan
He added, “We’ve become a very nimble organization from an IT perspective. When
we see opportunities to modify our business model, bring on new partners or improve
a process, IT is able to implement the necessary changes quickly. That’s a tremendous
competitive advantage.”
About BEA
BEA Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: BEAS) is a world leader in enterprise infrastructure
software. The BEA SOA 360™ platform, the industry’s most unified SOA platform for
business transformation and optimization, is designed to improve cost structures and
grow new revenue streams. Information about how BEA is enabling customers to
achieve Business LiquidITy™ can be found at bea.com.
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April 2007
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