Cost Streams

50 of 87 As early explained especially the restaurant industry is built upon relationships. So even though they have generally been easier to get in contact with, then the pandemic

restrictions has meant that MyLoyal has not been able to, during the lockdowns, to have physical meetings with these customers. This has also impacted the sales, where it has been harder to actually close the agreements while the lockdown has been present, as it has been difficult to nurture new relationships with especially these customers during this time.

The retail customers of MyLoyal has during the pandemic been reflecting upon the purpose of the physical stores. Petlux CEO, Frederik, explains that the purpose they’ve found is ‘’to provide guidance for the customers on various products, and assisting them more closely’’ (Hvorslev, 2021, 09:23). This focus on providing guidance, together with the increased investments into loyalty together with MyLoyal is an indicator towards a change.

Th

The customers of MyLoyal, the retail chains and the restaurant chains are both currently operating with the Promote & Sell mindset. There seems to be an indication, that the customers are through the increased focus on their customer behaviour and through the work of data together with MyLoyal, that they are slowly changing their mindset more towards Listen & Learn, Red Mindset. What it means when a customer changes mindset, and what the impact can be, will be reviewed in depth in Chapter 7 – Discussion.

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• Who are the key suppliers?

• Who is the company’s key partners?

• What key resources are needed from them?

• What key activities does the partners fulfil?

Applied to MyLoyal, the key activities are product design, app development, backend development, IT infrastructure, sales, marketing, and data. The overall value chain will be analysed in depth in the internal analysis in Chapter 6.4.5.

The key suppliers for MyLoyal are divided between big international suppliers and smaller suppliers. The big international suppliers are namely Kotlin, Swift, Apple, Google,

Firebase, IBM, Drupal, Pipedrive, LinkedIn, Sketch, Invision, Craft, Adobe Creative Cloud, Zeplin, Asana, Slack, and Dropbox. As explained in Chapter 6.2 Porter’s Five Force, due to the sheer size of these suppliers, MyLoyal has no bargaining power towards them and are at the same time heavily dependent on all of them. All sales is managed through the company’s CRM system, Pipedrive, and cold-canvas sales is executed as previously mentioned through LinkedIn Sales Navigator. For the product design pipeline, MyLoyal creates mock-up’s and prototypes through Sketch and Adobe Creative Cloud, which is upon completion uploaded through a Craft plugin to Invision. Invision is used for sales presentations and for customer design review. Once the design has been approved by the customer, the design is ready for development and is uploaded to Zeplin for hand-off to the developers. Kotlin and Swift are the official native programming languages used to develop the native iOS and Android mobile apps for the customers. Once the apps are developed they are launched through Apple App Store and Google Play Store. MyLoyal uses Google Firebase for powering the push-notification technology of the company. The backend is heavily build upon Drupal infrastructure, while all servers are managed by IBM Cloud. The project management is combined within Asana, and day-to-day communication is made within Slack and on Email. Contracts, Privacy Policies, Terms & Conditions,

marketing and sales material, and other legal texts are all stored within Dropbox. This entire process is called The 12-Step Framework and will be introduced in Chapter 6.4.2.

52 of 87 The smaller suppliers that MyLoyal works together with are VertexSMS, Reepay, and Storebox. VertexSMS is a Lithuanian custom communication platform (CPaaS) which MyLoyal uses for SMS communication and for onboarding new users via two-factor

authentication during user registration. MyLoyal’s CTO, Tadas Planciunas, has previously worked as the CTO at VertexSMS, and MyLoyal therefor has a highly competitive

international SMS supplier agreement with VertexSMS, which enables MyLoyal to provide very low global SMS prices to all of MyLoyal’s customers. Reepay is a Danish payment gateway provider, which MyLoyal uses for making in app transactions and to onboard users payment cards to the app through the Storebox Loyalty API integration. Storebox is a Nets daughter company, and has the highest payment certifications available in

Denmark. MyLoyal uses the Storebox Loyalty API in order to be able to recognize the users based on their payment cards and their transactions in a highly secure way.

MyLoyal has one primary and very important type of partnerships, namely the Point of Sales (POS) providers of the MyLoyal customers. Currently these are OnlinePOS, Ajour Systems, and FlexyBox - Which are all Danish companies. The POS providers play a crucial role in the loyalty app solution that MyLoyal provides the customers, and MyLoyal is there for highly dependent on the POS providers willingness to collaborate. The loyalty app that MyLoyal provides is based on purchasing behaviour and is directly integrated into the customers POS system. This means, that all transactions that MyLoyal uses for data analysis and for showing points etc. inside the app are based upon the purchasing transaction that must be sent from the POS providers, when the user makes a purchase.

Historically there has been a lot of challenges with these collaboration, since the POS providers don’t have any financial incentive to comply with the agreement. Since the legal structure is, that MyLoyal signs a contract with the customer, not with the POS provider, since there are no financial exchange between MyLoyal and the POS provider.

If we would be following the EBMC completely, now it would follow to analyse the cost streams resources. Here it would be analysed what resources are needed in the value creation, where and how is the customer relationship structured, and if there is a correlation between resource consumption and the company’s revenue streams. As explained in Chapter 2.3 The Extended Business Model Canvas & Strategic Analysis, I

53 of 87 have here supplemented The Extended Business Model Canvas with an expanded

internal analysis of the company in Chapter 6.4 Internal Analysis, which will answer these questions.