CSI’s Unsolvable Problem—Solved with Authorize.Net for a Competitive Advantage

interactive@smallbusinessmiracles.com Authorize.net, Software Development, Software Selection, Success Stories, System Integration

For nearly all ticketed events, seating locations don’t change after a ticket is purchased. For Cushion Seats, Incorporated, this wasn’t the case. As one of the pioneers in the business of leasing semi-permanent cushion seats for athletic events around the country, CSI needed a product as flexible and innovative as they were.

Problem: Automate tracking seat changes CSI had been tracking by hand
After successfully developing the first cushion seat system (where customized cushions are bolted to brackets on stadium bench seating), CSI ran into a seemingly unsolvable problem. In the weeks leading up to the first game of the season, the seating locations of their customers fluctuated, sometimes on a daily basis.

How could CSI ensure that once a person purchased a cushion, that cushion would follow that customer around the stadium as the ticket office shuffled seating locations for the upcoming season? For a customer who paid to lease a cushion seat, the worst is having no seat waiting for them on game day.

Since no software existed anywhere that could automatically track changes to seating locations based only on incomplete customer data, CSI attempted to track the changes by hand. As CSI grew in size and signed on more customers, a task that had been difficult turned impossible.

Solution: Develop a custom client-server program and custom integrate Authorize.Net
Stasyx developed a customized client-server program that would track the constantly changing seat locations of their customers. This required a seamless way to integrate ticket data from many different types of ticketing systems.

All that data flowed into the customized solution and generated an accurate, easy-to-read seating chart that allowed stadium managers around the country to get the cushions attached in the right spot in time.

The solution Stasyx created also integrated the many parts of CSI’s business model into a single source for easier management. The new application accepted and securely tracked credit card payments via a custom integration using Authorize.Net’s API, managed CSI’s extensive inventory, generated address lists for marketing purposes, and provided an indispensable action trail that greatly improved customer service.

Nikki Miller, President of CSI, credits Stasyx for allowing her company to provide a service that would have been impossible without the tailor-made, client-server application designed and implemented by Stasyx.

“The application from Stasyx gave us a competitive advantage over our competition by providing functions no off-the-shelf software could match. This allowed us to improve our customer service and react to changes from our clients in ways that would have been impossible otherwise.”

—Nikki Miller, President, CSI, Incorporated