Implementation of Loyalty System for BP GLOBAL

About BP Global

BP p.l.c. is one of the world’s leading international oil and gas companies, providing its customers with fuel for transportation, energy for heat and light, retail services and petrochemical products for everyday use. The BP group operates across 6 continents, and its products and services are available in more than 70 countries. BP employs 79,800 people (31 December 2015). The group operates 17 refineries (wholly or partly owned) and has 17,200 service stations worldwide.The company owns 5 key brands: BP, ARAL, Castrol, ampm and Wild Bean Café. The BP international headquarters is located in London.

Business Challenges

The fuel business is one of the most competitive markets. BP was one of the first to decide to run a loyalty program on such a scale, and after almost a year long tendering process, Comarch was chosen as the IT platform provider (among 20 other vendors). The main goal was very simple – a single global IT platform for all countries. Comarch’s co-operation with BP began in 2002, when an agreement was signed for supplying BP Poland with a loyalty solution. As a result of the success of this project, in 2005, Comarch signed a global agreement with BP and from that moment implemented the Comarch Loyalty Management (CLM) solution in Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, the United Kingdom, Austria and the Netherlands.

The main goal of the CLM system developed by Comarch for BP Global is to increase the attractiveness of the offer directed to BP customers and to help strengthen customer loyalty, and also:

keep the current customer base
gain new customers (and to respectively increase sales)
increase sales to current BP customers
increase company market share by using modern marketing methods
increase sales of non-petrol products
increase company prestige by building individual relationships with customers
decrease marketing costs

Program Rules

The Comarch Loyalty Management system is an advanced combination of business applications, allowing BP to construct a wide range of comprehensive and unique loyalty programs. The solution supports the management of BP programs, which operate in different models: multi-partner as well stand-alone. The system is integrated with one of the largest multi-partner loyalty programs known as “Payback”, which is present in Poland and Germany and “Nectar” in the United Kingdom. Comarch’s system interfaces with primary systems enabling customers to freely exchange points, after their conversion, for rewards available in the Payback and Nectar catalogue. Customer identification in the program is based on the loyalty program’s magnetic cards as well as co-branded cards and key fobs.

Loyalty points are issued to a user’s account based on the amount of fuel purchased and the value of the products and services offered by BP as well as specific events such as: a customer’s birthday, exceeding a defined expenditure level, frequency of visits and many others. Program members can exchange collected points for a wide range of rewards which are available in the reward catalogue, or they can redeem their pints as vouchers or discounts. Redemption of points for rewards is possible at service stations, via SMS, a dedicated B2C website or by calling the call center. All necessary information regarding loyalty points acquired in a transaction are printed on a receipt together with the account’s balance.

Benefits

The following implementation concept helped BP to build a competitive advantage on the petrol market and to become one of the most recognizable loyalty programs for customers. The most important benefits, which BP Global gained thanks to cooperation with Comarch are as follows:

migration from an off-line to an on-line system (no customer database replication is performed, no need for system shut down), detailed transaction information (account, card, member),
basket communication, points to be booked, date, every item purchase,
sophisticated promotion designer - no limit for marketing ideas,
targeted and personalized real-time marketing messages and coupons,
shortened promotion definition workflow,
targeted offers based on customer segments related to transaction history,
on-line card migration from old solutions
report engine - new philosophy based on templates and report generator
standard system and easy to change to standalone or coalition

Implemented Product

The system provided by Comarch met all of BP’s needs and requirements. Comarch delivered a different scope of functionalities for each BP country while maintaining the corporate standards, requirements and legal aspects of the local market at the same time. Additionally, each country implemented a unique loyalty program with individual operation models and separate loyalty programs creating independent promotions, redemption rules and marketing messages. The system modules implemented at BP included: Business Administration, Contact Center, Logistic Module, Business to Business Application and On-site Application (specifically developed only for the project at BP).

Implementation

A unique aspect of the project for BP is that it runs on a single IT platform which serves all their European programs. The system is hosted in the Comarch Data Center located in Krakow headquarters. BP also uses DRC services provided by the second Data Center in Warsaw. Comarch only provided a software solution but a wide range of professional services: consulting, development, customization, maintenance, account management and promotion creation services. Comarch provided integration with the POS system, 3rd party master loyalty systems, CRM, ERP systems, external analytical tool, SMS gateway, e-mail server and letter shop. An important element of the whole project was also to migrate data between the previous and the newly implemented systems. All the above mentioned implementations fully operate in the on-line mode.