Portal data flows

1/ Data flows

Basic data flows are described in the schema below:

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From source systems (Online Ordering, Card Issuing, NCDB) the data goes into Profile Manager. Profile Manager contains all data known about a customer (both recent and historical – for example expired cards). The most recent data from Profile Manager is sent to Marketing Manager to be used for marketing campaigns, personalized mailings etc.

2/ Source systems

Basic source systems of the data are Online Ordering, Card Issuing and NCDB. Let’t have short high level look at them and at their purpose.

Online Ordering

Through Online Ordering form, the customers put their card orders individually, together with all necessary personal data. From Online Ordering, after the order is approved by ER ISIC authority, the data goes to NCDB and from there, to Profile Manager.

Card Issuing

Card Issuing module was developed for „on the spot“ card issuance. The customer comes to a point of sale, the staff puts all the details into CI module and the card is issued immediately. Data about newly issued cards and cardholders is transferred into NCDB in real-time and from there, to Profile Manager.

NCDB

NCDB is a core module for cards issued through any channel of the ALIVE Platform. All data about cards and their cardholders goes subsequently from NCDB to Profile Manager.

Insurance Manager (only for Czech market)

Insurance Manager is a module for individual orders of travel and health insurance through an online form. The solution is impleneted for Czech market only. Data from Insurance Manager goes directly to Profile Manager.

3/ Profile Manager

Profile Manager is the core system for data management. Graphical user interface, through which data from Profile Manager can be seen, is called Portal – Internal application, which is briefly described in next sections of this course.

The core function of Profile Manager is to take data collected from all source systems and, using the logic described below, pair the data and create a customer which reflects one real life person. The logic is based on the concept of data pairing and data enrichment.

Data structure of Profile Manager is not flat. This means, one profile (which represents one real person) can have multiple cards (both valid and expired), more contact addresses, e-mails etc. assigned. The same person puts for example different e-mail addresses for different cards ordered through time and Profile Manager is able to pair the data correctly and save both e-mails. To understand this better, please have a look at John Doe’s example described further in this course.

Data pairing and data enrichment

When new action whithin any of the source systems happens (new card is issued, card validity changed, lincence returned, card cancelled), the data comes to Profile Manager. Then, using inner logic, Profile Manager evaluates if this data can be added to already existing profile or if it is necessary to create a new one. The evaluation compares the new data with existing customers. In case at least three from the following attributes of new data match an existing customer, the data is paired to this customer and his profile is enriched:

• Name + surname

• Date of Birth

• Card number

• E-mail

• Phone

If the pairing is not possible (there is not enough data to be sure the new customer is the same person as an existing one), completely new customer is created.

Data in Profile Manager is continously enriched with new attributes. When for example an ITIC card is issued to former ISIC cadholder, and Profile Manger manages to pair the new data with an existing customer, his profile is enriched by academic title.

Take a look at a specific use case:

Let’s have a student John Doe. John is at high school and he buys his first ISIC card using Online Ordering form. Into the form, he puts the following details:

John Doe, date of birth: 11. April 2002, email: john.doe@seznam.cz, phone: 724998541

His ISIC card is issued and all the data is transferred into Profile Manager, where new customer with ID 1 is created. 

After some time, John starts his bachelor studies at Charles University in Prague. The school issues ISIC cards for all its students, so also for John, new ISIC is created in NCDB. However, this time, Charles Universitiy uses John’s official school email address and his new personal phone number, so the details are:

John Doe, date of birth: 11. April 2002, email: john.doe@cuni.cz, phone: 665123874

The card is issued within NCDB and the data is tranferred into Profile Manager. Profile Manager tries to find whether the same customer already exists, but the result is negative. There aren’t enough data that would allow the pairing. The Name and surname fits, the date of birth also, but email and phone doesn’t. As a result, Profile Manager creates new customer with ID 2.

After John’s successful graduation, he starts his career at Czech Technical University, but this time as a teacher. The university orders for him an ITIC card. This time, his personal email adress is used again, and the same phone number as in the previous case. So, the details are:

John Doe, date of birth: 11. April 2002, email: john.doe@seznam.cz, phone: 665123874

The data is transferred into Profile Manager. This time, Profile manager finds the correct combination of personal data with customer ID 2 – name + surname, date of birth and phone match. So the data is paired, no new customer is created and the new data enriches customer ID 2.

More, at this moment, enriched customer ID 2 has also enough matching data with customer ID 1. Based on these matches, customer ID 1 and customer ID 2 are also automatically paired and the final customer is created. The „final“ John Doe has the following personal data:

John Doe, date of birth: 11. April 2002, emails: john.doe@seznam.cz, john.doe@cuni.cz,  phone numbers: 665123874, 724998541. 

As noted above, the data structure of Profile Manager is not flat, so it is no problem to have more email addresses, more cards or more phone numbers assigned to the same customer. However, in Marketing Manager, only the most recent data is transferred. So, in MM, John has only his ITIC card assigned, together with the newest email and phone number.

Prerequisities for the workflows to run correctly

The prerequisite for the whole process to work correctly is to put only real data into the source systems. In the real world, it for example quite often happens that when issuing the cards through NCDB, the same generic email address is used for many students. As the email is one of the parameters used for data pairing, in such a case, the whole concept cannot work properly.

Also, no data should be manually added directly to the end systems (into Marketing Manager for example). In the case of manual addition, the concept of data pairing within Profile Manager cannot be performed and the whole data chain would be corrupted.

4/ Portal – Internal application

The graphical user interface of Profile Manager is so-called “Portal – Internal application” (usually called only “Portal”). Portal is the right place where to find all information about individual customers, based on the pairing process within the Profile Manager. In more detail, Portal and its functionalities will be described in other courses. Please note the following pictures are for illustration only.

List of all customers within Portal. Individual customers can be searched based on their details, such as email address, surname or card number:

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Detail of a customer, where all information, picked and paired from all source systems, as well as from the mobile ALIVE app, are displayed.

List of cards assigned to the customer:

Preview of the rendered digital card, which can be seen in the customer detail:

5/ Marketing Manager

From Profile Manager, the data is transferred into Marketing Manager. Marketing Manager is the system for marketing automation (mailings, automated campaigns, etc.). Therefore, it is crucial to have the most recent data there. 

Unlike Profile Manager, data structure of Marketing Manager is flat. This means that each contact can have assigned only one card, one e-mail address, one phone number etc. The golden rule of Marketing Manager is that the most recent data is saved there. So in case our John Doe has more ISIC cards in his profile within Profile Manager, in Marketing Manager, only the „newest“ card is saved. Marketing Manger doesn’t contain about his historical cards.

6/ How does the mobile ALIVE App relates to Profile Manager/Portal?

After a customer downloads and installs the ALIVE App to his device and activates the ALIVE profile, his data, saved in Profile Manager, are automatically displayed within the mobile app. However, it works also vice versa. The customer, making changes within the ALIVE app, can also change the data in Profile Manager, and the changes are subsequently also transferred into Marketing Manager.

When the customer creates the ALIVE profile, he becomes the data master and all the data changed through the ALIVE app, as well as all granted/reclaimed marketing agreements, are taken with higher priority than the data taken automatically from the source systems. For example, in case a customer adds his email address through the ALIVE app, this email is taken as the primary email, and the email addresses from source systems (Online Ordering, NCDB, …) are taken as secondary ones. In other words, the active ALIVE app profile becomes the data master with the highest priority.