Overview

The multi partners reward platform enables multiple merchants to utilise the rewards features provided by the system, through a single organisation, by allowing them to:

• Create and run their own reward offers.
  
• Create and manage their own products.
• Create and run their own segments.
• Create and run their own communications (notifications).

Multi-Merchant Platform at a Glance

Merchants can be managed through a multi-merchants reward platform if they are created as partners within the business network and have a rewards' participation agreement in place. Such agreements define reward schemes that the partners participate in, the actions that can be performed directly by them, and their default contribution which is applied on all reward offers that don't have an explicit definition of the contribution for that partner.

Rewards participating merchants are the merchants that have a partnership with the organisation that owns the reward platform, and can participate in the provided reward schemes following specific award, spend and sign up rules. Furthermore, reward participating merchants are contributing to the amount that is awarded to reward participants, based on rules which are agreed and defined between the merchant and the company that owns the reward platform. By default, the merchant contribution is set to 100%.

Rewards participating merchants can be grouped into a business unit. Each rewards participating merchants business unit also has a partnership with the company that owns the rewards platform, so business rules representing the agreement between these two parties, such as the contribution rules, can be set up. All the rules apply to all rewards participating merchants within the same business unit. 

Set up the merchants

Create the (merchant/partner) Business Units which will be used in the agreements. These can be defined in a hierarchical structure.  

Set up the agreements

Set up the agreement for each merchant business unit with the reward schemes that they can participate in. 

Refer to the Rewards manual for more information. 

Set up the scheme and offers

Set up the schemes in which merchants will participate and create the reward offers. 

Refer to the Rewards manual for more information. 

Perform actions

Every time an award-eligible event takes place, the system will check against the merchant that logged the event in order to find the applicable offers as well as to calculate the contributions. The way to identify the merchant (or business unit) through which an event is logged is through the 'Created by Unit' of the event.

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Setting Up Multi Merchant Rewards Platform 

Reward Merchant Agreements 

Merchant agreements establish the cooperation between the business operating the rewards platform and its partners (merchants) that participate in the schemes. A set of rules are agreed between the parties that determine the contributions by the reward partners to the amount awarded to participants. Rewards participation agreements are defined at the business unit level. 

Refer to the Rewards manual for more information (Reward Merchant Agreements option). 

Owning an Account 

Every 'parent' (merchant) business unit (of type 'commercial') has its own account so that debiting and crediting of the account from reward actions can be handled for each merchant (based on business unit definitions). For example, in a setup where multiple shops of the same brand (company) operate under a 'parent' business unit and share a rewards plan, then a single account at the 'parent' level is sufficient. However, in a setup where you have multi 'operation' merchants that operate within a common rewards plan, you would need to have an account defined per unit.

As soon as you select a business unit in the agreement, the account will be set automatically as defined in the Business Network.

The account defined on the agreement will be used during the settlement process to either debit or credit accordingly.

Participating in specific schemes

The power of the multi-merchant platform comes from the ability to have reward schemes shared among multiple merchants as well as schemes which will be specific to the merchant. For each scheme you can allow or deny the sign up of new participants to the scheme. If sign up is not allowed, then logged in users belonging to the business unit of the agreement will not be allowed to register new participants.

Setting up partner permissions

User (partner) permissions allow you to safeguard against changes on the reward platform setup such as offers, products, segment and communications from users within the business unit. User permissions are defined at the User level (based on business unit) but also via the Access Control and User Permissions (in the System Settings). 

Refer to the Network and Security manual for further information. 

Additionally you can define if participants can be awarded for customer events which are performed by the specific partner as well as redeem their awards on that partner. If awards can be redeemed you can define the range within the spent amount that can be allowed (Contribution Settings). 

Refer to Reward Merchant Agreements (Rewards manual) for further information.

		Rewards Participant	Organisation	Result
1	Allow Automatic Spend
2	Allow Automatic Spend
3	Allow Automatic Spend
4	Allow Automatic Spend

Do not confuse Spend Method 'Spend Instantly' (available in a number of reward offer classifications) and 'Allow Automatic Spend'.

• 'Spend Instantly' directly deducts the award earned from a specific purchase as an instant discount, regardless of the participant and merchant setting.
• 'Allow Automatic Spend' deducts any awarded amount available in the participant's wallet (possibly in addition to 'Spend instantly').

Refer to the Rewards manual for further information (Reward Resolution, Reduction & Processing Settings option). 

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Defining the reduction method

The reduction method defines how the amount requested by a participant to be spent will be reduced. Each partner can define their own reduction settings depending on the way they operate.

The allowed reduction methods are the following:

• Front-End Reduction: If selected then the reduction will be done by the front-end system (for example the POS). This is the default option.
• Back-End Reduction: If selected then the reduction will be done by a back-end system (for example PayPal). An example of a back end reduction is where a customer doesn't get an instant discount on their purchase (granted through an award), instead the customer will pay the normal price at the point of sale and the awarded money is returned to an online account, e.g. PayPal. The amount will be credited to the participant's account and then refunded through the online account.

Contributing to the awards

A contribution determines the percentage of the awarded amount that should be provided by the rewards partner. By default, the partner contribution is 100% but it's possible to change this. The contribution percentage is defined per reward offer and can be set per Business Unit.

Refer to the Rewards manual for further information (Rewards Offer option). 

Debiting and crediting partner accounts based on contributions

Reward settlement is the process responsible for balancing rewards participating merchants by debiting them for a percentage of the amount of money that was awarded by them, as defined through the agreed contribution rules, and crediting them for the amount of money that was spent by customers on them.

You can define the Settlement evaluation will be based on transactions that were performed in the past X months as well as how often the settlement run should be performed.

Refer to the Rewards manual for further information (Merchant Settlement Settings option). 

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Using the Multi Merchant Platform

Viewing and managing agreements

Partner agreements are available and can be managed through the Rewards Board (Rewards > Reward Board) in addition to the configuration pages.

Perform actions as a merchant user

Users belonging to one of the business units that have partner agreements defined in the system will be allowed to perform actions subject to the permissions defined in the security settings (Configuration > System Settings > Set up Security Settings > Access Control & User Permissions).