Scaling Innovation: How 27Global Transformed Gift Card Impressions’ Digital Vision into a Scalable, Multi-Tenant Platform Leading to Acquisition Success

OPPORTUNITY

Founded in 2007, Gift Card Impressions was an established presence as a key player in the gift card industry, holding a number of patents and executing on innovative ideas. Their primary focus was on engagement, packaging, and merchandising solutions for gift cards – both directly to retailers and to other gift card providers. Through these channels, Gift Card Impressions was strong in physical retail.
With an eye towards “what’s next,” Gift Card Impressions had the vision to leverage their expertise to launch a digital, mobile platform for gift card sales, encompassing both D2C and B2B sales channels. Their incumbent custom software provider was working on the buildout of a new digital platform, but was plagued by inconsistent delivery and failed to meet key schedule milestones and quality objectives. Gift Card Impressions leadership decided it was time to begin a search for a new technology partner to help bring the platform to completion.

APPROACH

GCI cast a wide net in their search and conducted a competitive selection process.  27Global’s hybrid onshore/offshore model and Agile methodology aligned well with GCI’s vision, enabling a structured yet flexible development process. The strategy was to “go fast by slowing down,” ensuring a well-structured and stable platform while addressing frequent market feedback and rapid changes inherent in a startup environment.  27Global also brought an enterprise-level approach, planning for expansion and scalability from day one.

SOLUTION

27Global was selected as the primary technology partner and brought the digital platform to completion and a successful launch.  Key success factors in the build included:

• API-Driven, Microservice-Based Approach: This framework paved the way for scalability and flexibility to meet quickly changing customer requirements.
• Multi-Tenant Architecture: The platform was engineered to support multiple customers and retailers, ensuring data security and integrity
• Retailer Integrations: Successfully integrated GCI’s platform with multiple major retailers, implementing customer specific customizations and solutions
• Responsive Design: Accessibility and high fidelity user experience across all devices

RESULTS

As soon as the new digital platform was launched in 2016, it was evident that Gift Card Impressions and 27Global had delivered a compelling, innovative technology solution.  As such, they became an attractive target for acquisition.  A pillar in the gift card and payments industry expressed interest in the company and eventually closed an acquisition of them.  The acquiring company leveraged the digital platform successfully for several years after acquisition, continuing to gain revenue and market share.  Many former Gift Card Impressions services are still in use in 2024.  

“As we evaluated potential technical partners, three things differentiated 27Global from the competition: their hybrid onshore/offshore model, structured agile methodology, and enterprise level approach and mindset for building a platform”

– Karl Geisler, SVP/Digital of GCI

27Global continued the engagement with the acquiring firm in a service and support role, doing site operations, maintenance, and additional feature development.

“When GCI reached out to 27G, they were at an inflection point; they were receiving significant market feedback and traction, but their backlog was growing faster than they could keep pace with.  Our team was able to add scale to attack the feature roadmap immediately, but also process and engineering rigor that ensured success.”  

– Matt Henley, President of 27G

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