Retaining customers nowadays became a goal of strategic importance for telecommunications companies. In order to inspire customers to use the different products and services, most of the service providers seek a tool that provides service-adjusted promotions to its customers. – Marketing Manager of Magyar Telekom, Zsolt Győri sums up one of the most recent challenges of the market.

Promotion program
T-Com and T-Online launched the PoP Promotion Program with the same goal on October 4, 2005. Customers joining the program can collect points for their telephone and Internet invoices and for purchases in T-Pont shops. For a certain portion of points customers get an automatic T-Com invoice promotion and the remaining portion of points can be used for purchases in T-Pont shops as well as T-Online credits the points when fee for wideband content (T-Online Téka and T-Online Zeneáruház /Music Shop) is paid. Private and business customers of T-Com and those T-Online customers, who use certain defined Internet services, can join the program.

Group synergies
On the basis of utilizing the synergies inherent in the Hungarian Telekom Group, PoP Promotion Program is suitable for offering new promotions in the future both in the area of voice-and Internet services.
To configure the points collection systems essential for the operation of PoP Promotion Program is an extremely complex IT tasks – IT Project Manager of Hungarian Telekom István Búza continued. The system had to be connected to the invoicing and customer management systems of T-Com and T-Online, to T-Online Webshop, to the ’cash desk’ program of T-Pont shops as well as it had to implement the new business processes ranging from registration to more complex point campaigns.
„Given the tight deadline available, it was important to select a technology that supports the fast, efficient development with ready-made tools and solution samples.” – the expert says.
It was a natural requirement for the newly implemented application to be developed by using state-of-the-art, standardized technologies and to be capable of catering for future tasks, too.
Apart from satisfying the technological requirements, given its high speed, reliability and scalability, BEA WebLogic represented the right answer to the expectedly massive transaction volume and increasing number of customers. The implementation was done by the domestic technological centre of BEA, Alerant Inc., which also took part in the development of the Loyalty System of T-Mobile’s Connection Gold Card Program and has extensive experiences in the development of large corporate systems.
The timely and accurate implementation of modifications and of new specification that were raised during launching the program, as well as the almost half-year fault-free operation of the program proved that T-Com has acquired a flexible, reliable system.

Quality-assured development
The development of application required for the operation of PoP Promotion Program was implemented in four phases, within which the different functions were implemented in a phased manner, according to the business priorities. Experiences gained in the area of loyalty programs during participation in the development of T-Mobile’s Connection Gold Card Program represented a great help for the requirement analysis – Alerant Inc. expert, András Danyi points out. The establishment of a proper cooperation with the contractor also had a great role in the development process. As a result of which – although deadlines were tight – the timely go-live of the system was in no danger in any of the project phases.

The strength of requirement analysis
Quality assurance was given a great emphasis. Test development guidelines were applied and the principle of „what is not tested is not ready”. The strength of really thorough – UseCase-based – requirement analysis was strongly manifested during the elaboration of test cases, since the description of the individual functions at the same time served as the basis for that given test case. Automatic tests covering the entire functionality always reflect the actual status of requirement fulfillment and they can be run at any time, even on a most recently installed system. The test script that implemented almost four hundred test cases also simulated the operation of the related systems, therefore the system can be also tested in itself.