DePaul Athletics Ticketing

1. DePaul Athletics Ticketing Presented By Rich Crothers & Igor Kanevskiy April 14th, 2005

2. About DePaul University • Established in 1898 • Urban, Catholic, Vincentian • 23,500 students • Approximately 75% commuter students • 4,500 faculty and staff • Sports • Men’s and Women’s basketball and soccer • Women’s softball and volleyball

3. DePaul’s IS division • PeopleSoft shop • 120 people • Running Windows 2003 and Unix systems • Blackboard School • Unix Transaction System • Blackboard Learning System

4. DePaul University’s Athletic Ticketing Solution • Session Objectives: • Why did we want a new athletic ticketing system? • Choice of solution • Solution design • Lessons learned • Innovation • Build a working web-based ticketing solution within existing system architecture • Results of Design

5. Why do we want a new athletic ticketing system? • DePaul University recently instituted an athletics fee • Provide free or discounted event admission • Handle expected increase in attendance with the move to the Big East Conference • Automated system to address event registration and payment for extended benefits • Ability to sign-up for an Athletics event at any of DePaul University venues: Wish Field, Athletic Center and Allstate Arena

6. Solution Options • Two possible solutions • Buy TicketMaster’s Archtics solution • Build internal DePaul solution • Solutions evaluated with Even Swaps methodology

7. Even Swaps Analysis

8. Decision DePaul’s internal solution • fit best with the Athletic Department functional and overall requirements • High visibility to students • Integrates into the “Student Experience” • Exclusively DePaul branded • Use the DePaul ID as the “Ticket”

9. Results • Solution has been live and largely successful for the athletics fall and winter seasons • 35+ Total events • Total attendees = 8904 with 1338 guests • Total parking passes sold = 1030 • Total bus requests = 3348 • Students and fans commented that the system was “cool”, “easy” and “advanced”

11. PeopleSoft / Blackboard Interface

12. Sequoia Wireless Reader • 10 readers • Project required online use

13. Solution Design • Blackboard Transaction System Unix Edition • Count Privilege/Account • 1 tick for student • 1 tick for guest (limit 1guest) • Daily reset • AP-NP Bug with Daily Count reset

14. Solution Design • Peoplesoft interface with Blackboard Transaction System Unix Edition • PeopleSoft script (SQR) runs to import patrons into BTSUE • PS Auto Schedule to update adds to the events • Automated Import Script on BTSUE • Run morning of the event • Updated every 30 minutes until event start time

15. Solution Design • Blackboard and Informatica • Script to run log recall for Sequoia readers “to file” • Informatica pulls file from /tmp • Analyze Swipe used data vs. Sign Up

16. Student Experience Flow

17. Solution Design • PeopleSoft Enterprise Portal

18. Event Reservation • Check student eligibility • Athletics fee charged? • Web service call to PeopleSoft Student Administration System • Check availability • Seats still available? • Registration still open? • Log beginning of session

20. Reserve Tickets • Tickets are reserved for three minutes • Update session with purchase options and expiration time • Additional availability checks

22. Collect Billing Information • Payment • Credit card number • Number verified by algorithm • CVV2 • Name and address

24. Charge Credit Card • Web service call to a DePaul eCommerce Service • .NET Web Service • Wrapper for a COM DLL • Synchronous call across the Internet

25. Credit Card Vendor - Nova • Contact the vendor with required information • Process response • Log the transaction to a separate database • Return code from Nova sent back to reservation application • Reservation application determines whether to continue, give user another chance, or to stop the purchase • Allow only three attempts

27. Confirmation Screen • Update session to reflect a purchase • Past attempts are marked as invalid • Parking Pass displayed if purchased

28. 314,854 emails 22 campaigns in 4 ½ months Three types of communications Reminders to Students with Reservations Student Attendee Drive General Awareness of New Student Athletics Tickets Benefit A variety of offline marketing support drove students to Athletics website Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

29. Reporting • Event and registration data moved to a data warehouse • Analyzed and displayed with Informatica’s PowerAnalyzer • Tool is entirely Web-Based

30. Lessons Learned • Scalability of solution • Quick, efficient processing of transactions • Linking multiple systems together requires a bullet-proof design and superb coding • DePaul had 4 out of 35 event failures • Two first test events and two first “live” events • AP-NP bug in BTSUE (3 failures) • PeopleSoft interface to BTSUE (1 failure)

31. Conclusion • Innovating Together in ‘05: • Built a working ticketing solution from scratch in 3 months with 7 people • Solution has been live for the athletics fall and winter seasons, with our largest event comprising around 2,000 students • Partnership with Blackboard and Sequoia • Contact Info: • ikanevsk@depaul.edu • rcrother@depaul.edu

32. Question?