• Short turnaround time—they required all components of the core system fully functional in less than 3 months
• Client required access to all legacy data from the new system
• The system needed to be scalable. Initial projections estimated over 75,000 page views a year and more than 150,000 total transactions a year (the real numbers were actually much higher)
• A user-friendly customer-facing frontend website was required to allow customers to both submit rebates and check their rebate status
• A complete customer service ticket system was required. Customers needed to have the ability to contact the rebate center through the website and have their responses tracked and organized
• A robust data entry tool was required which would allow for a data entry operator to input two or more "joint" rebates (offers which shared a customer and their survey data) at the same time, without requiring a duplication of the data
• Data entry users who were paid per piece needed to be able to track the total number of pieces they had completed. Accounting, meanwhile, required the ability to view piece counts for all data entry operators in order to perform payroll
• The data entry tool needed to be built in such a way that it minimized keyboard-to-mouse switching, allowing users to intelligently tab through a given record sheet. It also needed to minimize the number of page loads between entry pieces
• Customer service representatives needed to be able to log all calls and email communications with a customer and have them readily accessible from the customer's account page
• The ability to search for a customer account or issued check by a number of means, including:
  • Partial name
  • Partial address
  • City, state or zip code
  • Phone number
  • Issued check number
  • Customer id
  • Email address
• The ability to monitor the experience of the frontend web user and use that data to better fine tune the system
• The system needed to be able to print rebate checks directly from the application, with controls in place to ensure only authorized individuals were establishing check runs and to further ensure that the runs were generated as desired
• Check runs required the ability to export a bank-ready "positive pay" file, establishing the checks as valid with the issuing financial institution
• Users with invalid rebate submissions needed to be notified via postal mail. The system needed to be able to generate invalid notices for a mail merge

• The system scaled gracefully early on to a traffic level of over 4 million hits per year with over 250,000 transactions committed and over 65,000,000 transactions warehoused and tracked
• Customers are able to submit their rebates through an entirely online process, requiring no mailed or faxed in paperwork. This required coordination with participating Clients to receive, import, process and warehouse their incoming sales batch data in order to reconcile rebate submission attempts with valid sales records
• As a result of this, the web-based frontend needed to be built in a manner that would allow users with all levels of computer experience to quickly and easily submit their rebate while ensuring the site was fraud proof.
• In the nearly three years the system has been active and receiving online rebate submissions, there have been no successful attempts at fraud.
• Customers can perform status lookups if they can provide a matching combination of an address number, last name and zip code. This solution allows users who mailed in their claims to track their status without having exchanged a user name or password
• Online-processed customers have the ability to manage their account; specifically to verify and alter any address information on file. As a result of this, the system needed to maintain a history of ALL customer addresses, since a customer could conceivably have a check mailed, change their address and then complain it was never received. The changelog provides an audit trail and an easy way to determine where every single check was delivered
• To facilitate quick and accurate customer service exchanges with online tickets, the system intelligently attempts to automatically match incoming support tickets with customer accounts in the database. The ticket response tool further offers several (admin-customizable) pre-populated support ticket templates for standard responses which contain data pertinent to the customer's request
• The search tool is able to return accurate customer results within 5 seconds from a customer database, reducing customer call reconciliation time significantly
• All customer communiqués are linked to their account and visible on their account page. This includes all phone calls and emails, both outgoing and incoming. It also tracks which Customer Service Representative communicated with the customer
• All errors users receive are logged for the purpose of interface enhancement and to identify any operational issues with the system. Developers are notified if error levels trend improperly (based on the body of history collected over the past two years) and may make interface or code adjustments as appropriate. This helps ensure a higher quality user experience and reduced customer service costs
• Additionally, Synapse Studios was also recently commissioned to implement a CASS address certification system in order to increase mailing accuracy and dramatically cut postal costs. This system has been integrated into the core application successfully
• The application is hosted off-site in a Tier 4 rated datacenter with a completely separate off-site backup solution
  • Database data is backed up every hour
  • All server files are backed up nightly to a separate off-site location on a securely maintained, restricted backup vault
  • Backup safesets as they are called are encrypted using AES-128 bit encryption ensuring data integrity and security
  • Since data is backed up to a live hard drive instead of a tape-backed solution, data restores can be performed within an hour without data center intervention
  • Highly cost-effective, as client does not require an extremely expensive internet connection to their place of business, or emergency generating equipment and other datacenter infrastructure
• Throughout this project, we also made extensive use of Synapse Studios' own Subversion control system, SynSVN, to maintain and track changes to the codebase.

• The system now facilitates all elements of the rebate fulfillment pipeline. Within an entirely web-based solution, one highly modular system allows workers at the rebate house to process all incoming submissions, monitor for potential duplicates and strip out invalids, handle customer service inquiries, prepare checks for CASS sorting, print checks in order and with the POSTNET barcode as necessary and monitor the cashing and voiding status of all checks
• Client has been able to retain several high-profile clients for whom online submissions and rebate tracking was a must. Before our solution was in place, client had no online-capable systems
• The cost savings recognized from the CASS certification implementation alone are enormous. By approaching every other process with great attention to detail, we've been able to trim the fat and make the system as a whole more efficient and considerably more cost effective, reducing client's per-piece cost burden
• By working with the bank's "positive pay" systems, fraud has been almost completely eliminated. Additional safeguards are in place to ensure that individuals within the company are walled off such that no one user has access to all the processes involved in a check run

The development of this application resulted in a long-term relationship between the two companies. As our client has continued to grow, they have continued to request new functionality to the system. Since the system was built to be modular and configurable, new features could be added easily and quickly, allowing them to meet the demands necessary to sign potential Clients and to secure their existing ones. The result is that the core of their business now runs on the Synapse Studios solution, functional and ready to scale further as they grow.