Piaggio Loyalty Program - Dealers App

In order to answer the requirements of the project the approach of a multi-tier web-based extranet application was selected.

The application had two sub-systems. The dealers sub-system, where the dealers were logging in, in order to submit new sales and vehicle repairs and the administrators sub-system where the administrators were able to view and download aggregated and per dealer reports, create and modify dealers' accounts and perform maintenance tasks like updating the parts database.

In order to make the system easy to be used by the dealers, we developed a one screen data entry form with auto-suggest functionality and intuitive competion tips.

In order to always have up-to-date parts information and in the same time to be able to perform fast lookups in tables with thousands of records, we used a local parts database - a mirror of the Piaggio's central database - that was updated in a standard frequency defined by the administrators (every some hours) through SOAP web services.

Finally, for the creation of the dealers' accounts and because Piaggio's network counts hundreds of dealers we created a process that was sending automated emails to the dealers. Each email was containing a unique for each leader hyperlink. With this link and some easy to follow instructions contained in the email, the dealers were able to setup their account by themselves.

The success of this application has been proved by the fact that the Piaggio's help desk, received less than five support requests by the users of the application that were more than 500 people and while it was supposed to be used only for two months in the context of a marketing campaign it's usage was extended for 4 extra months.