Just over two years ago, Loyalty NZ modernised and relaunched the Flybuys programme offering members more choice in how they’re rewarded. As well as points to spend in the Flybuys store, members could now choose from additional fuel discounts from Z and Caltex or New World dollars. 

The relaunch of Flybuys marked the beginning of a brand transformation fuelled by a significant digital transformation, led by Chief Data and Technology Officer Brian Ferris and his team, to deliver an increasingly automated and personalised loyalty ecosystem. 

This has resulted, says the company, in the Loyalty NZ team being better placed to enhance member experience and provide smarter customer insights to partners.

The organisation has seen increased membership and engagement, with an additional 215,000 additional Flybuys members and over 640,000 accounts choosing their reward ‘currency’ since the relaunch.

“We needed to invest in the latest technology to modernise our programme, moving away from legacy systems and on-prem working. Our members entrust us with their personal data and in return have expectations about how we use that data. And rightly so,” says Ferris. 

In 2020, the company was still running two on-prem data centres and had some solutions running Windows 2003. The tech backbone now in place enables the organisation to deliver more innovatively and effectively.

In March 2022, the team completed cloud migration by moving Loyalty NZ’s last solutions and decommissioning its data centres. This has led to significant gains in data-processing efficiency, according to Ferris, with daily load times reduced by over 75%. 

Being cloud-based also enables Loyalty NZ to scale up quickly for periods of increased demand, for example the Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales. The company’s eCommerce store is one of NZ’s larger ones by transaction volume, and in 2021 the team was able to scale it by a factor of six during peak periods to match demand. “This enhanced our member experience - we went through the entire holiday retail period from November to February with no outages impacting members. Typically, we’d experience 6-10 critical outages on our old stack,” says Ferris.

The old on-prem data warehouse and transaction engine have been replaced with modern, cloud-native platforms. "Without these, we wouldn’t have been able to deliver the real time APIs that enabled the Loyalty NZ ecosystem transformation," says Ferris.

A united approach to drive change

“A key success factor has been the tight integration with the rest of the organisation. Part of the transformation has been changing the mindset around data. It’s no longer seen as a technology tool; rather, a strategically valuable asset owned and governed by the whole enterprise,” says Ferris. 

Getting understanding and buy-in from other senior leaders in the organisation for the need for digital transformation was crucial.

“I had seen that the business value of cloud migrations and digital transformations were sometimes poorly understood at other organisations. This meant they risked losing support and stalling when the transformations hit challenges or there was a funding squeeze.” 

“To avoid this at Loyalty NZ, we ensured that myself and the Chief Customer Officer were ‘joined at the hip’ in our objectives and approach. We established and continue to lead a multi-year work programme covering all workstreams contributing to our automated customer engagement goals," he adds.

All tech initiatives, including the cloud migration and tech debt removal had clear business value and deliverables which were jointly sponsored by Ferris and the CCO. 

“This ensured they were no longer seen as tech projects and were just another component of the business strategy. We had shared KPIs and made a point of both being able to speak to all parts of the programme; both line of business and technical elements. This approach made influencing stakeholders (including the rest of the leadership team and our board) more effective. At each stage we prepared and presented the full story rather than separate tech and marketing components. The flow-on effect to the business included successful cross-functional teams springing up under the umbrella of our dedicated work programme, which became a strong internal brand in its own right. “  

This has allowed the team to move at pace and complete the cloud migration in March 2022 with over 80% of the solutions being rewritten to cloud-native on the way. 

“This has unlocked business value by enabling automation of more than a quarter of our possible processes (new campaigns) in the first year. It has also shortened modelling time by a factor of more than 25,” says Ferris. 

“We worked closely with AWS, Instillery and VMware to come up with an innovative solution that was a world first that reduced migration time by 50% and cost by 30%.”

Putting people first

Loyalty NZ’s Chief Executive Officer Lizzy Ryley credits the success of the digital transformation with Brian Ferris’ people-based approach.

“Brian is a people person and understands human nature, especially potential reactions to the uncertainty of change. Tech leaders often have to work harder to get buy-in, as they are essentially trying to explain abstract tech solutions to non-techy people who ‘don’t know what they don’t know’ about technology. Brian succeeds by keeping people top of mind, building trust and taking time to learn each stakeholder’s language. This builds credibility, particularly around the senior leadership table and with board members. Brian’s approach is always about listening to understand first, rather than selling in a tech solution.” 

She adds that Brian has built up a team of highly credible and empowered leaders around him. 

“The team has a united direction and shares responsibility for influencing key stakeholders, especially our senior leaders, partners and the wider team. Under Brian’s leadership, the team builds strategic relationships with vendors which take a long-term approach and result in better outcomes for the business.”