GetPlus Maximizes the Value of Its Loyalty Program on AWS

Studies have shown that there’s value in investing in loyal customers. According to Forbes, increasing customer retention by 5 percent can increase profits by 25–95 percent. Indonesia-based startup GetPlus helps brands boost retention and profitability through its customer loyalty rewards program. Consumers collect points on frequent purchases from any of the company’s 64 partners in industries including food and beverage, beauty, travel, banking, and fast-moving consumer goods.

Launched in 2019, GetPlus has more than 380,000 users who have downloaded the GetPlus mobile app. App users upload store receipts via their mobile devices to the GetPlus platform, and an optical character recognition software in the backend extracts the data from the receipts to calculate the number of points rewarded. Points are then added to members’ accounts in a matter of minutes; these can be exchanged for e-vouchers, which members download to their devices for use in GetPlus partner stores or websites. Alternatively, members can exchange their points for physical vouchers or products on the GetPlus App for home delivery.

GetPlus was running its platform on the cloud, however application programming interface (API) updates reduced the performance of its web servers and decreased the availability of its services. Whenever updates were carried out—usually once every few months—the business experienced 2–3 minutes of downtime.

Cofounder and Chief Operating Officer Adrian Hoon then looked to serverless technology to apply the API updates. However, the startup wasn’t confident in its partner’s ability to provide the support required as it looked to scale its business. “With our previous local partner, it was difficult to find what we needed, which made it challenging for us to solve infrastructure issues and carry out upgrades,” says Hoon.

The company turned to Amazon Web Services (AWS), whose local sales team had already spoken to GetPlus about the AWS Partner Network (APN) in Indonesia. The AWS team put GetPlus in contact with Jakarta-based AWS Partner ICS Compute to support a cloud migration and help improve the platform to reduce the risk of downtime.

GetPlus agreed to make the switch and planned the migration for six months with ICS Compute. Julius Usman, technical lead at GetPlus, says, “We really appreciated the level of proactiveness from ICS Compute. The team was quick to answer all our questions.”

By working with ICS Compute, GetPlus halved the time it would have taken to complete the migration internally. ICS Compute also ensured the migration and data transfer process didn’t impact the performance of the GetPlus infrastructure. For example, ICS Compute used AWS Application Migration Service to largely automate the lift-and-shift of the Windows-based GetPlus backend from the legacy cloud to AWS. “We started the migration at midnight and successfully completed it by 7 a.m.,” says Usman. “It was a seamless process.”

To maximize the performance of its infrastructure, GetPlus migrated its Windows-based applications and core Microsoft SQL Server database engine to Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances. The company adopted Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC), with security groups controlling inbound traffic so only whitelisted IP addresses could access the database, which protects member and partner data.

Furthermore, with the support of ICS Compute, GetPlus switched to AWS Lambda serverless functions for API updates and eliminated the risk of member services being impacted or unavailable during the updates. Usman explains, “Because each AWS Lambda function is a single service, it doesn’t affect any of our infrastructure when it updates an API.”

As a result, GetPlus members can upload receipts or check balances, and partners can view dashboards on member spending patterns around the clock without service disruption while the APIs, which are stored in Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), are being updated.

By migrating to AWS, GetPlus also lowered its IT costs by more than 30 percent, optimizing the AWS infrastructure with the support of ICS Compute. GetPlus adopted EC2 Instance Savings Plans, which lowered the cost of computing because of a specific usage commitment. It also optimized daily backup processes while incorporating AWS Backup to automate data protection across the platform. “Despite having more services with AWS than we did with our previous cloud provider, our IT costs are still lower,” says Usman.

Besides lowering costs, GetPlus also ensures its platform has the scalability to handle spikes in data traffic during busy shopping periods. During Lebaran, for example, data traffic can spike by 40–45 percent. Usman says, “Our GetPlus platform scales automatically according to changing shopping patterns.”

With the help of ICS Compute, GetPlus is looking to accelerate the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) services into its platform. The startup plans to discuss adding AI and ML capabilities for fraud detection, such as hackers trying to steal points, and personalization in the last quarter of 2021.

These capabilities will allow GetPlus to personalize vouchers more closely to members’ spending patterns according to their likely purchases and timing. Hoon concludes, “With AWS and ICS Compute, we can drive development while maximizing the value of our program for partners and increasing the profitability of their customer relationships.”

To learn more, visit Windows on AWS