IPC Brings the Speed of a Start-up to the World of the SUBWAY® Card Program
Miami, FL (PRWEB) August 26, 2013 -- IPC, an independent SUBWAY® franchisee-owned and operated purchasing cooperative, manages more than 200 million SUBWAY® spending/gifting cards. To streamline this process and provide greater quality control, IPC teamed up with Gaslight, a design and development company, to create a custom web-based software application that manages the creation of SUBWAY® cards within IPC’s Issuer Identification Number (IIN).
The new IIN Management software automatically generates card and pin numbers for large batches of pre-loaded gift cards. “We can now accomplish in two days what used to take 12,” says Erin Wood, SUBWAY® Card Program Manager, IPC. “We’re also boosting the SUBWAY® brand, because we know that every card will work, every time a customer hands it over at a register.”
The new automation provides greater data integrity for card numbers and PINs. The system automatically transfers new card orders to printers. The new software maximizes all the card numbers possible with IPC’s Issuer Identification Number (IIN).
IPC’s internal development team worked with Gaslight software to create the new IIN Management application quickly and efficiently. “We love to bring the speed and technology of the start-up world to enterprise,” says Chris Nelson, co-founder, Gaslight. “Many companies don’t realize how easy it can be to combine these exciting newer approaches with existing IT infrastructure.”
To quickly develop the IIN Management software, Gaslight turned to Ruby, a popular programming language among tech start-ups that allows for faster development. The Gaslight team integrated Ruby into IPC’s existing Java infrastructure with JRuby, an implementation of Ruby for Java. JRuby essentially black boxes the Ruby code, so from the outside, the IIN Management software really is a web-based Java application with the JRuby interpreter and all the Ruby libraries packaged within it. This allows for faster development with no costly infrastructure changes.
This also allowed the team to leverage Ruby on Rails, a framework for building web-based applications in Ruby. Rails brings with it a large ecosystem of pre-built code due to the huge developer community. “One of the great things about using Rails is that there’s almost always an existing library to do what you need,” Nelson says. In many cases, this allowed the team to deliver features in hours that would have taken days or weeks with another technology.
About IPC
IPC is an independent SUBWAY® franchisee-owned and operated purchasing cooperative. Based in Miami, IPC negotiates the lowest costs for purchased goods and services, while improving quality, enhancing competitiveness and ensuring the best value to SUBWAY® members and their customers. http://www.ipcoop.com
About Gaslight
Gaslight builds the apps and software that build businesses. As a design and development shop, the company creates custom software, web apps and mobile apps for small- to medium-sized companies. Gaslight specializes in bringing the technology and agile processes of the start-up world to enterprise. The company is based in Cincinnati. http://www.gaslight.co
Gaslight Contact:
Chris Moore
chrism(at)gaslight(dot)co
1-888-507-3430
Cell: 864-541-2055
http://www.gaslight.co
Stephanie Sylvestre, IPC, http://www.ipcoop.com, +1 (305) 479-4203, [email protected]
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