1-page Solution Brief - Posted 2/26/2007
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Ticketing Company Teams with Development Service, Creates Agile Architecture
Business Needs
Since 1979, Ticketek has been the top ticketing company in Australia and New Zealand. The company, which is headquartered in Sydney, provides customers with admission into popular concerts, sporting events, movies, and more.
To process transactions, Ticketek created a proprietary, UNIX-based ticketing engine about 20 years ago. The software was built specifically to manage ticket sales without relying on third-party software—and it does so quite effectively. The specialized nature of the solution, however, meant it became less flexible, and the skills needed to maintain it became harder to find. As the business strategy at Ticketek shifted to a more customer-centric focus, the existing system struggled to adapt.
“It reached the point where it became increasingly difficult and took an exorbitant amount of time to add new features into the system,” says Greg Fahy, Product Development Manager at Ticketek. “At the same time, there was a lot of pressure from business managers to quickly implement new services that would improve the customer experience.”
For example, Ticketek has more than 6 million people—almost a third of Australia’s population—in its customer database. With the existing system, the company was unable to use the information contained in its database to target customers with focused marketing campaigns and savings.
Rather than redevelop the entire system, Ticketek wanted to implement a new solution that would integrate with its legacy ticketing engine while adding increased flexibility to allow Ticketek to quickly respond to business demands. The project vision included 71 architecture requirements and 79 customer management requirements. In addition, the new solution needed to support up to 5,000 concurrent users.
Solution
The complexity, scale, and budgetary constraints of the project led Ticketek to search for a partner. After evaluating multiple options, the ticketing company decided to work with the Microsoft Solutions Development Centre. This dedicated software development facility helps organizations create business solutions based on Microsoft technologies. “We looked at quite a few partners. But after seeing how the Solutions Development Centre worked, we knew this partnership would result in a great project—and our IT department would learn a lot from the processes and methodologies used internally at Microsoft,” states Jonathan Williams, Systems Architect at Ticketek. In May 2005, a team of 10 Ticketek IT pros relocated to the Solutions Development Centre in Sydney to collaborate on-site with Microsoft experts. At the center, Ticketek was able to:
- Directly contact product development teams.
- Take advantage of Microsoft best practices.
- Use Microsoft resources and tools.
- Collaborate with key Microsoft partners.
In just eight months, Ticketek and the Microsoft experts created the Stepping Stone project by combining Microsoft SQL Server™ 2005 Enterprise Edition (64-bit), Microsoft Visual Studio® Team System, Microsoft Operations Manager 2005, and Microsoft BizTalk® Server 2006. Ticketek architected, developed, built, and tested the solution, with Microsoft experts on hand to provide advice. The project allows seamless integration with the existing ticketing engine—and creates a flexible, service-oriented architecture that supports innovative business applications. The new development foundation also provides Ticketek with customer relationship management capabilities.
Benefits
Says Fahy, “Stepping Stone is providing tangible benefits just three months after deployment. The new applications that we developed have resulted in fifty percent fewer calls to the call center and, in some instances, reduced data entry by sixty-six percent.” The Solutions Development Centre also encouraged an increasingly positive team environment. Explains Williams, “The process engendered an almost mythical burst of energy and productivity that small teams sometimes generate when everything is perfectly aligned.”
Access to Microsoft Product Teams
The Solutions Development Centre placed Ticketek in close proximity to Microsoft product development teams, giving the ticketing company more confidence to try leading-edge Microsoft technology. Both BizTalk Server 2006 and the Visual Studio Team System were then beta-stage applications, but with Microsoft experts on hand to mitigate risks, Ticketek confidently included the products in Stepping Stone. “If we ran into an issue and needed to draw upon a particular skill set, those skills were immediately available to us,” says Fahy. “For example, when we developed the integration solution using BizTalk Server, we had crucial performance milestones. Working with the BizTalk Server developers, we were able to exceed each one.”
Agile, Flexible System Delivered
The Stepping Stone project created with the help of the Solutions Development Centre allows the Ticketek IT team to follow a standardized architecture during any new development. The consistency inherent in a standard structure ensures that each new feature and application integrates seamlessly—with each other and with the legacy ticketing engine. “There’s no headache trying to make things work together—integration is now automatic. Stepping Stone lets us respond to new demands in a fraction of the time it took before. My team is able to create workable features in just a month or two, not the year it used to take,” states Fahy.
A Single Customer View Established
The Ticketek customer database, which contains more than 6 million people, has been a valuable asset for the company. But the legacy system hasn’t allowed the company to fully utilize that information. With Stepping Stone, Ticketek can now extend the benefit it derives from its customer database. The company can segment the information contained in the database and target customers with focused messaging and ticket offerings. For example, a recent marketing campaign moved 50 percent of a single customer segment from resource-draining call center services to a more efficient online model—in just one week. This is direct savings to the company and higher operational efficiencies.
Microsoft Methodologies and Processes
Says Williams, “Working with the Solutions Development Centre introduced us to a set of agile software development techniques. In retrospect, it just seems like the way companies should develop software, but so few actually do.” While building the Stepping Stone project, the Microsoft Solutions Development Centre employed daily build and automatic testing processes, resulting in 144 total builds. The Ticketek IT team has adopted this methodology, allowing Ticketek to catch bugs earlier in the development life cycle and give the company clearer visibility into the progress of any project.
