Overview

The basis of a retailer's loyalty scheme is built around a data structure referred to as a Unit. These units are structured in such a way to mirror the retailer's business structure and the way in which they wish their loyalty scheme to be targeted to customers.

These units can be structured in many different ways, however from experience, Eagle Eye suggests a three unit hierarchy. This structure provides the best starting point for any loyalty integration. Once created in this structure, the setup can be modified to adapt to the needs of the integration. The below image visualises this hierarchy

Unit Types

The above image shows two different unit types. A Company Unit and an Outlet Unit. These types represent different entities in the AIR platform.

Company Unit

A company unit represents a business entity. For example, the above structure is made up of three company units in a hierarchy. At the top of the tree is a unit that represents the top of the business structure. For example, a PLC. As direct children to this PLC unit, we have two banner units. These represent trading entities. For example, a retailer may have a grocery business and a general merchandise business. The types of offers targeted to this are going to be against a different set of products, have different rules and are generally separated businesses... but with a linked loyalty scheme.

Outlet Unit

An outlet unit represents a sales location. The easiest to think about is a physical brick-and-mortar store. Following the example above, the grocery chain of the business may have 50 physical sales locations around the country and the general merchandise store has 20 locations. These 50 and 20 stores are created in the tree structure as children of their respective banner company units.

Capabilities With a Three-Level Hierarchy

Structuring your units in this way enables offers to be created that target specific banners. For example, the General Merchandise store may wish to push out an offer on a new Microwave that is available in the months of June and July, while the grocery store wants to incentivise the purchase of fruit and vegetables so pushes out a continuity offer to target the grocery location.

It also means in future, new partnership units can be added to this structure, opening easily the door to any future initiatives.

Setting Up The Outlets

Once the company units are created in the basic structure, a file-based ingestion can be set up to make sure all the outlet units are created in the correct place. The details of this file load are documented here: Store Ingestion

Although not mandatory, Eagle Eye advise automating this file-loading process. From experience, a weekly file drop and ingestion are sufficient to capture all the required changes to outlet units.

Alternative Structures

Although the above advises a three-level hierarchy, Eagle Eye recognises that every business is different and is structured differently. Within reason, these structures can be set up within the AIR platform. The other commonly used structures are a two-level hierarchy where there is just a single company unit with outlets directly as children. This will enable all the same functionality. The limitation here is that if in future there is a requirement for other banners or partners to be added to the structure, a significant amount of effort is required to complete the restructuring.