Why Your Business Needs to Consider a Comarch Loyalty Alternative?

The world of enterprise technology has undergone a seismic shift in recent years. With the rise of digital transformation and the growing popularity of headless and composable architectures, digital teams can no longer afford to stick to the status quo and rely on all-in-one systems to meet all of their business needs. This approach will only prevent you from tapping into the potential growth that the future holds.

The shift towards modular architecture, where businesses can pick and choose from a bag of best-of-breed solutions, has also affected the customer loyalty space. The customer retention market is flooded with loyalty solutions of all shapes and sizes. However, in this article, I want to draw your attention to the major drawbacks of using a monolithic loyalty solution like Comarch and explain why your business can benefit more from a lightweight and agile customer loyalty software, such as Voucherify.

What is Comarch Loyalty Management?

Comarch Loyalty Management is a product of a Polish IT giant, Comarch, which has been delivering IT solutions to enterprise clients since 1993. It is a large-scale loyalty solution targeted at clients in B2B, B2C and B2E space. The Comarch solutions provide a vast array of tools aimed at boosting the brand loyalty of your most engaged customers – from the collection and analysis of zero-party data through membership tiers and gamification. 

Following the cloud revolution, Comarch began offering its loyalty management platform in the SaaS and on-premise models. They have also extended their set of APIs to join the club of API-first solutions. On paper, it all seems like a step in the right direction. But, there are some shortcomings in Comarch's approach to building loyalty software that may not be immediately obvious.

The problem is that while they may have adapted to the latest technology trends, they may not have put enough thought into the flexibility of their loyalty solution. Having a loyalty system set in stone is like trying to build a house on a foundation of sand. Sure, it may look good on the surface, but as soon as the tide comes in, the whole thing comes crashing down. Comarch has definitely made some positive changes, but it's important to take a closer look and ensure that your loyalty platform of choice is truly up to the task.

Why should brands reconsider using Comarch Loyalty Platform?

Comarch is in the business of monolithic solutions – built to handle all aspects of an organisation's operations. As such, it can be slow to evolve and adapt to new technologies. 

It will get the job done, but it's not exactly user-friendly, and it's not built for the fast-paced, constantly evolving digital landscape we live in today. Flexibility and adaptability are key to success in the current market.

And let's not forget the cost. Monolithic solutions are known to be much more pricey than a SaaS subscription. As highlighted by the MACH report, it's no wonder why many organizations are looking for more flexible, maybe more lightweight, solutions to future-proof their operations in the customer loyalty space, especially if they are running simple loyalty use cases. 

Credit where credit’s due – Comarch loyalty solution is definitely a solid one. However, due to the sheer scale of their platform, some brands could find Comarch software to be bloated and hard to operate daily. Don’t get me wrong – it’s good to have options; however, there comes a time when too many options can paralyze decision-makers and hinder business growth. So what is the alternative to Comarch loyalty cloud? Let’s start by taking a closer look at what is and isn’t important in the space of enterprise loyalty. 

What are the must-have features of enterprise loyalty software?

Businesses of all shapes and sizes are vying for customer loyalty. They offer discounts, rewards, and special promotions in a never-ending race to win over the hearts and wallets of their customers. But for enterprise-level businesses, the stakes are even higher. They need a loyalty platform that can handle the unique challenges and requirements of a large-scale operation.

Enterprise-grade loyalty platforms need to:

• Be able to collect and act on first and zero-party customer data. 
• Connect easily (preferably through APIs) with other parts of their systems, such as CRMs, IMS, POS, and more. 
• Offer priority support and dedicated integration engineers and success specialists. 
• Meet international standards for data protection such as GDPR, ISO, and CCPA. 
• Provide account security with 2FA, single sign-on policies, and team management features. 
• Offer the best possible performance with dedicated clusters (cloud-based solutions).

But even with all these features, enterprise businesses still face common issues when managing loyalty programs. Inefficient data management, program security, lack of personalization, low adoption of mobile-first loyalty, and lack of consistency are just a few of the hurdles that need to be overcome. Most of these issues stem from a lack of development talent, time, and resources. In the context of monolithic solutions, these problems arise due to a lack of flexibility and a long time to market, which stops creative teams from capitalizing on new trends and channels. The biggest challenge for Comarch loyalty solution and other similar offerings is not with meeting standard enterprise requirements but rather with change management which takes up a lot of time, slowing down brands from going to market fast. 

But there's hope. There are dedicated loyalty software solutions competing against the likes of Comarch that can alleviate some of these pain points. The ones I would highly recommend are built with the MACH approach in mind – they are API-first, cloud-based and headless. 

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What are the benefits of switching from Comarch Loyalty to a headless loyalty solution?

With the monolithic approach, you're stuck with what's offered and have to adjust your vision to fit the limitations of the platform. But what if there was a new way to approach loyalty software? One that gave you the freedom to mix and match different features and tailor them to your exact needs? Enter the world of headless loyalty software.

2022 saw a significant increase in the adoption of headless SaaS among global enterprises, but 2023 is predicted to be the year when the headless approach goes mainstream. The idea behind headless SaaS is that businesses can only innovate if they are based on a modular architecture where each element can be quickly plugged in and out. This approach allows for greater flexibility and faster innovation, and it's something that more and more businesses are starting to realize.

With headless SaaS loyalty solutions, you're no longer dependent on one vendor, and you have more control over your loyalty marketing strategy. These solutions are based on an open web architecture, which allows vendors to introduce new features faster and build a new reality where costly and delayed upgrades are a thing of the past.

Headless loyalty solutions offer several game-changing benefits for enterprises, including:

• Faster deployment speed.
• Limited capital expense and lower TCOs.
• Attractive pricing models in the SaaS model where agreements can be started and cancelled without prior notice. 
• Better flexibility and integration capabilities with other best-of-breed headless tools. 

With more flexibility, faster innovation, and lower costs, headless SaaS loyalty solutions are the future of enterprise loyalty. Here is how Voucherify is disrupting the market with an API-first loyalty platform. 

What makes Voucherify a notable Comarch Loyalty competitor?

Voucherify is an API-first Promotion Engine that allows you to choose which building blocks to use and quickly integrate any third-party apps to automate and simplify even complex workflows. We made Voucherify hyper developer-friendly, so you can plug us into your stack in hours, cutting development time by weeks, if not months.

By switching from Comarch to an external headless loyalty engine, your organization can experience plenty of benefits. With a quicker time-to-market, you'll be able to adapt the platform's functionality to your unique business needs. The flexibility of the system allows for easy updates and changes, and you'll have more control over your loyalty programs.

Voucherify is not only a robust loyalty engine – we offer a complete suite of marketing campaigns, all nested in an intuitive API and marketer-friendly interface:

• Discount coupons and cart promotions – Explore how BAEMIN launched over 800 campaigns and redeemed 100+ million promo codes with Voucherify (case study).
• Referral campaigns – Discover how Pomelo Fashion increased conversion rated by 300% with a Voucherify-powered referral campaign (case study).
• Gift cards – See how Bellroy powered their mysterious Black Friday campaign with gift cards (case study). 
• Bundle deals – Learn how iBood’s marketing team can build creative bundle campaigns with Voucherify (case study). 
• Giveaways 
• Cashback programs
• Digital wallets

Voucherify loyalty program module is ready to tackle even complex loyalty workflows thanks to robust API and support for custom properties and events. You can choose between plenty of loyalty mechanisms to engage your customers:

• Custom currencies and flexible points assignment. 
• Custom reward actions and rewards. 
• Gamified tiers. 
• Secure expiration policies and time-based events. 
• Member profiles and segmentation. 
• And more. 

Learn more: Explore Voucherify's Open Source Loyalty Accelerator

Summary

Change is always hard, especially when we’re talking about enterprise legacy systems that have been around since the Stone Age. By far, the biggest roadblock to updating legacy systems to more flexible and modular ones stems from resistance to change and a lack of understanding of potential benefits.

We understand the importance of continuity and have designed our platform to help you continue running legacy promotions and loyalty programs without hitting the brakes. With our sandbox project and test data, you can experiment with your loyalty strategy without risking any disruptions. We also offer an unlimited free trial and plan to build a proof of concept without spending a dime. And if you do decide to switch, our easy import of multiple data objects via API or CSV, technical migration support, currency-agnostic API, and flexible data model that allows you to operate on custom business data, will make the transition as smooth as possible.

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