In 2005, the City of Saint Etienne set up a cultural offer for 16-25 year olds, the Sainté Pass. The principle: 13 coupons for 10 euros giving the right to discounts on shows, exhibitions... An initiative that appeals, but the paper format quickly proves to be restrictive. In 2010, sales dropped by half. The decision was therefore taken to create an innovative, entirely paperless portal to relaunch the offer.
With nearly 6,000 sales at its launch, the Sainté Pass has been a real success with young people, but sales are rapidly slowing down. Faced with this situation, the Mission Jeunesse et Vie Etudiante (Youth and Student Life Mission) of the city of Saint-Etienne launched a major opinion survey in 2010. The feedback from young people was clear: the paper-based system offered little visibility on the available offers and was too rigid. At the end of 2011, the city decided to completely rethink the offer and to modernize it by equipping itself with a web portal and a mobile site, both clear, aesthetic and flexible.
An experimental project
The project is particularly innovative: to create the first portal in France to offer a dematerialized end-to-end service. This was certainly a motivating challenge, but also a bold gamble. The constraints were very strong: registration, ordering, payment and e-ticketing, and even a dedicated mobile site, everything had to be done online," explains the information systems manager. Another requirement was to provide maximum flexibility to partner establishments that manage their ads directly online. Finally, the deadline was short: the site had to be online by April 2013. Following the launch of the market, the partnership between Micropole and MoneyLib was appealing thanks to the great flexibility offered and by the ticketing system, TicketLib. "It was a gamble. We were reassured by the guarantees they gave us regarding the management of the project. We appreciated their approach. The site they proposed was much more flexible, malleable and easy to develop than the other responses to our consultation. These were essential conditions for meeting deadlines and costs. Successful gamble: the site went live on April 17, 2013.
Taking a risk that pays off
Design, conception, project management... Micropole managed the project from start to finish and acted as the sole contact for the city's IT department. This was a sure guarantee of the quality of the follow-up. "We set up a group of beta testers in the summer of 2012, made up of young people, students and working people, to get their feedback on the models, which enabled us to make rapid progress on the prerequisites. Micropole was involved at every stage and managed the ticketing system with TicketLib. This saved precious time and enabled us to have a single contact person. In addition, at our request, they designed the site in Drupal 7 for greater consistency with our existing information system. The site still requires some adjustments, but since September 2, 2013, the Sainté Pass is available in full via a mobile site and the web portal www.saintepass.fr. The key: the possibility for young people from Saint-Etienne to predefine their centers of interest in order to receive personalized benefits, to benefit from free offers, to receive the ticket directly on their smartphone... " Micropole reassured us throughout the project and was able to alert us when necessary. This was undoubtedly one of the keys to the success of the project".
The Project In Brief
Micropole supported the City of Saint-Etienne at every stage of the project to develop the web portal and mobile site: design, conception, development, project management, deployment and training. At each stage, the Micropole team was available and responsive and its involvement clearly contributed to the success of the project.
The Micropole and Ticketlib teams worked in partnership from the scope definition phase to the deployment of the solution, and the good coordination of the teams enabled the solution to be delivered on time.
TECHNOLOGY USED: DRUPAL V7, CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (CMS)
The content management system used by Micropole is the Drupal CMS. This free solution allows content management, user management and access control. The advantages of this tool: flexibility, ease of administration and modularity.
THE PROJECT ISSUES
For the city of Saint-Etienne, there was a strong communication challenge around this project within the urban area, linked to its innovative aspect, based on the complete dematerialization of the offer. For Micropole, the challenge was also to meet deadlines and control costs.
