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Overview
One of Bravand’s milestone achievements in 2024 was the design and development of a cutting-edge corporate digital issuance platform for Miconex, the leading provider of “shop local” initiatives.
Delivered within just six months and launched in October 2024, the platform allows corporate buyers to seamlessly buy and send bulk orders of digital gift cards.
This project marked the latest innovation in a partnership spanning over five years between Bravand and Miconex. While the brief centred on simplifying corporate bulk buying, the platform’s development also unlocked broader benefits, transforming the consumer purchase process and improving how recipients receive and use digital gift cards.
The brief
Miconex tasked Bravand with creating a system tailored to corporate buyers, enabling organisations to:
- Purchase bulk digital gift cards via credit card or invoice.
- Choose whether to send gift cards immediately or schedule them for a later date.
- Submit recipient details either manually via a form or by uploading a CSV file.
As well as these core user journey and commercial elements, the brief also included elements across security, anti-fraud, order management, and reporting.
The work
Our work covered all of the main phases you would expect from a software development project:
- System Architecture: Designing a scalable and reliable system capable of handling complex bulk transactions.
- UX and UI Design: Creating intuitive workflows for corporate buyers, covering from very simple baskets to the quite complex.
- Development: Front end development, custom e-commerce elements including order management flows and processes, secure database creation, and distribution systems.
- Testing: Conducting extensive testing to ensure the platform met the highest standards of functionality and performance.
The jewel in this project’s crown
Pretty simple project right? Not exactly but that’s a conversation over a pint one day… All we can say is we probably have one of the most varied checkout processes going!
That said, one major development that soon became a total game changer was the way we delivered cards to recipients.
With digital gifting being live for 18 months, we had a whole load of feedback and niggles about how the current system worked.
We looked at the two biggest niggles of the system to date:
- As a buyer, you HAD to supply the recipient’s data - you could not send the gift to yourself to pass on.
- As a recipient, you HAD to enter the same details the buyer used in order to get your gift.
Now there were good reasons as to why the system worked this way at the time - one being that digital gift card distribution was quite groundbreaking and therefore the required security checks were vast and clunky. However, as time moves on and other opportunities for security checks present themselves, we were now able to cut these niggles out.
Out went user data generated card requests; in came a fresh new activation code system!
Each code stores within it the details of gift card product (ie Sheffield or Perth) and its value and, when entered into our Love Local app by a registered user, would then activate the digital gift card request and deliver it to the user in app - ready for them to add to Apple or Google Wallet.
This means that buyers could get codes sent to themselves to put into a greetings card of their own; helps manage those times when buyers might get the email address wrong; and all manner of other customer service queries. Phew!!
Results
The platform launched in both the UK and Ireland in October 2024, enabling Miconex and their clients to expand its corporate offerings for Christmas 202, while simultaneously streamlining the purchase and redemption process for all users.
By simplifying the digital gift card experience, the system has really made buying, sending, and receiving digital gift cards easier than ever for both businesses and individuals.
New order management and reporting features have also been developed to make staff lives a lot easier too.
“This project has been a real partnership between Team Bravand and our brilliant clients at Miconex. Working together on the scope, the design, the delivery and the testing - all of which made it possible to get this innovation live in such a short amount of time. This has been a total game changer for a platform that’s been a labour of love for many years. It’s truly delivered some really great a-hah moments and we’re so excited to see how they help the Miconex business grow.”
Jilly Cross - Founder, Bravand
Ongoing partnership
This project represents the latest milestone in Bravand and Miconex’s enduring partnership. Over the past five years, the two companies have worked together on numerous initiatives, consistently pushing the boundaries of what local gifting technology can achieve.
While this project focused on corporate buyers, its ripple effects have enhanced Miconex’s overall digital offerings, demonstrating the potential for technology to benefit all stakeholders—corporate customers, individual consumers, and local businesses alike. Supporting their brilliant efforts in using technology to support local economies through the development of local gifting opportunities.
