Automating Coupon Management for 3,000+ Mobile App Users

Description

A Norwegian discount business turned to Altoros to build a web system and a mobile app that digitize coupon generation and redemption—with a focus on security, high availability, and scalability.

Brief results of the collaboration:

• The customer built a web system coupled with iOS/Android apps to automate discount management, serving 2,000+ partner shops, cafes, etc., and 3,000+ mobile users.
• The security measures in place prevented unauthorized access and data breaches, as well as ensured compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
• The introduced optimizations reduced the server response time to just 2 milliseconds, contributing to unparalleled performance.
• The customer streamlined operations with a GitLab-based continuous integration/delivery pipeline.
• With the delivered solution, it is now possible to abide by social distancing protocols during COVID-19, promoting online shopping, automated voucher generation, etc.

The customer

The customer is a founder of one of the largest discount networks in Norway. Established in 2004, the company consolidated 2,000+ partners to offer discounts for products and services countrywide.

The need

Initially, the provider distributed paper-based discount booklets through sports clubs. To redeem a discount, a consumer had to cut out a voucher and show it in a shop, gas station, or cafe, along with a provider’s plastic card. Involving paperwork and manual effort, the process was inefficient and time-consuming.

The COVID-19 pandemic also called for a solution that would allow to continue the distribution of vouchers despite lockdown and minimize physical contact between all the parties involved.

The customer wanted a full-scale transformation—however, hiring and onboarding necessary talent might take up to 6 months. So, the provider relied on cloud-native expertise at Altoros to build a web system that would automate voucher generation. The company also hired mobile development talent at Altoros to deliver iOS/Android apps for end users.

The challenges

Under the project, the team at Altoros had to address the following issues:

• Since the system would process personal information of consumers located in Europe (a name, a login, an e-mail address, a password, etc.), ensuring proper security and compliance with GDPR was crucial.
• The customer’s network had reached up 2,000+ partner locations and would continue to expand. To be able to sustain increasing loads, it was necessary to ensure the system’s high availability and scalability.

The solution

Stage 1. After analyzing the customer needs, the cloud-native expertise at Altoros developed a web system on AWS, which had all the required tooling for scalability, high availability, and security. The engineers utilized AWS Lambda to enable fault tolerance and reliability. Amazon CloudWatch was implemented for infrastructure health monitoring and incident reporting.

With AdminJS, the team delivered an admin panel to automatically generate vouchers, add locations, view sales statistics, etc.

Stage 2. The mobile developers built iOS/Android apps to activate/redeem discounts, find locations nearby, etc. To bind the web system with the mobile apps, the engineers delivered a REST API.

For mobile apps, the team enabled login via Facebook, Apple ID, and Google. The developers provided ongoing support, updating the system to the changing authorization policies of these services.

Stage 3. To protect sensitive data in the web system, the team at Altoros configured Amazon Cognito, enabling role-based access control, secure shell encryption, GDPR compliance, etc. For iOS/Android apps, the engineers utilized standard security measures (e.g., keychain password management).

Stage 4. To achieve unparalleled performance, the engineers at Altoros employed the materialized view pattern at a database level. This sped up querying, reducing server response time to 0.002 seconds. By configuring full-text search in PostgreSQL, the team facilitated data retrieval even with mistakes in queries.

Stage 5. The developers integrated Google Maps into mobile apps to search for locations offering a discount within a 60-kilometer radius.

Stage 6. The DevOps experts containerized the web system with Docker and built a GitLab-based continuous integration/delivery pipeline to streamline operations. Finally, the QA engineers performed functional, regression, accessibility, and other tests.

The outcome

In collaboration with Altoros, the company digitized discount management by building a web system and iOS/Android apps in just 3 months. This allowed to save on inefficient and costly printing/distribution of voucher booklets across 2,000+ partner locations. Furthermore, the provider has grown its customer base to 3,000+ mobile users per month, enabling them to activate/redeem discounts virtually rather than via paper-based vouchers. Thanks to the delivered solution, now it is possible to abide by social distancing protocols during pandemics, promoting online shopping, automated voucher generation, etc.