Challenge
A corporate rewards platform needed to automate gift card ordering and distribution for their employee recognition program. The existing manual process – placing individual orders through provider websites – created delays, tracking difficulties, and limited the organization’s ability to scale the program across multiple business units.
As the recognition program expanded to additional business units, the administrative workload scaled in proportion. More units meant more time logging into separate provider portals, placing individual orders, and reconciling transactions with no shared audit trail. There was no path to growing the program without adding staff time to manage the ordering process.
Solution
84EM developed a custom integration that connects directly with two gift card providers, automating the entire ordering and delivery process. The system handles merchant catalog access and complete order processing through a single unified interface, replacing the manual ordering workflow entirely.
Key Capabilities
- Automated order processing. The full lifecycle from order creation through card assignment and fulfillment confirmation is handled automatically, eliminating the manual steps of placing orders through provider websites.
- Unified multi-provider interface. Two gift card providers are connected through a single system, so the rewards team works with one tool regardless of which provider fulfills the order.
- Flexible delivery. Both email distribution and direct download are supported, allowing the rewards team to choose the appropriate delivery method for each recipient.
- Complete transaction logging. Every order, card assignment, and delivery is recorded for audit trails, budget tracking, and compliance reporting.
Results
Gift card fulfillment went from a manual, per-order process to fully automated processing. The rewards team no longer logs into provider websites to place individual orders – the system handles ordering, assignment, and delivery notification automatically.
The unified interface across two providers eliminated the need for the team to manage separate workflows and credentials for each provider. What had been two distinct ordering processes became a single, consistent operation.
The automated transaction logging gave the organization budget tracking and audit capabilities that hadn’t existed before. Every order is recorded with full context, supporting the compliance reporting requirements that had previously relied on manual record-keeping from spreadsheets and email receipts.
The automation allowed the recognition program to scale across business units without proportionally increasing the administrative workload. Higher order volumes no longer require more staff time to process.
