Transforming NUS Extra to TOTUM

Arrk Group has partnered with OneVoice to Transform, Enrich, and Maintain digital platform called TOTUM for students and professionals. Before September 2018, this was only one student discount product called NUS Extra, owned by the NUS – National Union of Students, a not-for-profit organisation.

OneVoice, who was already providing digital support to NUS for the UnionCloud membership engagement platform, took over NUS Extra and transformed the ageing product with a new energetic look and named it TOTUM – a single digital platform for Student Discounts, Proof of Age ID and Student Life.

Arrk Group played a crucial role in the transformation and enhancement of the platform right from its inception through to live deployment and continues its association with OneVoice to provide more innovative features.

Customer

OneVoice is a vibrant collaboration between the National Union of Students (NUS) and Arrk Group, bringing together the best talents of each organisation to build and engage communities of common interest. With a heritage stretching back to 1922, OneVoice passionately understands what it means to collaborate and work together for the common good. OneVoice believes in the positive impact communities, and associations have on society and the collective strength when people come together for the benefit of all. The challenge is to harness and unlock this positive power, amplify engagement and release a community’s potential – to make a lasting difference.

Much more than an award-winning and versatile membership platform, OneVoice provides a suite of additional services, all wrapped around the central tenet of putting people at the heart of all we do.

Vibrant Collaboration

Award-Winning

Not-for-profit organisation

Situation

The NUS Extra card was losing market share in the student discount world due to an ageing app and outdated offers catalogue. NUS Extra faced competition from other players who offered better alternatives in the form of digital services and usage. Furthermore, these competitors had better reach and penetration and provided best-in-class student discounts. These issues directly impacted the revenues and resulted in users shifting their allegiance to the competitors.

Following a detailed review, OneVoice and Arrk Group decided to build a dedicated student discount platform called TOTUM, in which user retention, revenue generation and ease of use would be the key drivers behind the long-term vision of the product. Key components included:

A brand-new front-end website
An offer management system
Digital apps for iOS and Android devices

These features had to be supported with innovative marketing campaigns to announce TOTUM’s arrival and begin the quest to become UK’s number 1 student discount platform.

Strong Competition

Android Mobile App

iOS Mobile App

Solution

The solution/services delivered the following:

We evaluated a complete product strategy in terms of matching current consumer expectations and looking at beating the existing competition by providing a little more, like Proof of Age products
Help the creative and marketing teams to go to market with a rebranded youth-oriented brand
A diverse yet flexible digital ecosystem, including:
- Brand new native apps to allow better reach and connect in the digital age
- A brand-new website for advertising the product, posting blogs, and consuming content
- A streamlined sales web application capable of catering to the sale of existing and new discount card products
- A new slick discount authoring system that helped source and add discounts that would need to be consumed by the end users eventually
- A future-proof micro-services stack that supported all functions from card sales, discounts, user management, student verification frameworks, and many more
A best-of-breed open-source technology stack is powering all products. This includes the use of:
- AWS cloud infrastructure
- Java microservices
- Web applications built in AngularJs, ReactJs and VueJs
- Native apps in Android and iOS built using the best frameworks
- Use of the latest CaaS services like Contentful for easier and more powerful CMS
- Continuous integration and deployment via DevOps tools like Bitbucket, Jenkins, CircleCI, AWS DataDog
- Comprehensive reporting using RedShift DW, PowerBI, Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics and VWO for conversion rate optimisation
Integrations with 3rd party email and messaging services like SendinBlue and OneSignal
Dedicated product development and support teams, including engineers, architects, product owners, and data analysts with a DevOps culture
Support the legacy infrastructure in the transitory phase, including ASP.NET applications and integrations with print partners

With a product mindset and hybrid Agile methods, a team of 30+ at Arrk delivered this in under a year, with the first big launch in less than six months.

Hybrid Agile Delivery

Flexible Digital Ecosystem

Best of Breed Technology

3rd Party integrations

Outcomes

The above services and solutions were crucial to keeping the business innovating with new product offerings and consistently improving the core discount platform to stay competitive in a notoriously crowded discount and loyalty landscape. Important outcomes include:

An active million-plus user base
The increasing average daily active user count on apps is currently at 10K, including both apps
100,000 unique site visitors every week accessing the latest discounts on offer
Increase in ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) by creating compelling higher-value product offerings and targeting them appropriately at the user base
Improved B2B product and high-impact media offerings for brand partners
Increased revenues are invested back into product development and foster future potential for innovation in the student market