Indigo – Case Study

Rebuilding an Iconic Loyalty Program for Scale, Control, and What's Next

Joining a complex, multi-partner composable replatform to recreate an iconic loyalty program and build the foundation for its future evolution on a compressed timeline.

Flatlay of a laptop showing the Indigo online store shopping bag with plum Rewards points, surrounded by a potted plant, a candle, a lilac notebook, a pen, and a cup of coffee on a purple desk.

Indigo is Canada's largest book and lifestyle retailer, home to one of the country's most recognized loyalty programs: plum Rewards. When Indigo embarked on a major composable replatform—upgrading several mission critical platforms simultaneously—Orium was brought in to lead the Talon.One implementation. The mandate was twofold: faithfully recreate the existing plum program to support a seamless customer transition, while building the foundation for the next generation of plum.

Talon.One logo.
Three colleagues gathered around a laptop at a bright office window, collaborating and pointing at the screen.

The Challenge

Indigo's replatform was already well underway when Orium entered the engagement. The broader initiative involved a coordinated effort across multiple platforms—including Talon.One as the new promotions and loyalty engine—with multiple internal teams and external agencies each carrying their own workstreams and timelines.

Joining mid-stream meant Orium needed to move quickly. The Talon.One implementation was a critical dependency in the chain: internal teams, partner agencies, and Indigo's own development resources all had active requirements that depended on it. There was no runway for a slow start.

Orium needed to recreate a mature, high-stakes loyalty program used by millions of customers with enough fidelity to support a seamless cutover, while simultaneously beginning discovery and implementation of a future proof foundation that didn't yet exist in production.

Orium came into a complex, already-moving engagement and got up to speed faster than we could have anticipated. They were a true partner from day one.

Kevin Charles, Senior Director, Core Services & Architecture

Over-the-shoulder view of a person working on a laptop showing the Talon.One admin interface configuring loyalty point effects for the plum Loyalty Points Program.

The Strategy

Given the compressed timeline and the number of moving parts, Orium would need to prioritize speed to clarity. Rather than a traditional extended discovery phase, the team planned to execute a rapid discovery process designed to surface the essential requirements quickly enough to begin delivering against both workstreams, without sacrificing accuracy.

The approach would be deliberately dual-track. The first track would focus on a like-for-like recreation of the existing plum program in Talon.One, ensuring it could be validated, tested, and launched in lockstep with the broader replatform. The second track would run concurrently: using sandbox environments to begin designing and implementing potential future enhancements to the program, which would give the broader project team the forward visibility they needed to plan their own dependent work.

Maintaining alignment across a multi-agency, multi-platform program would also require a collaborative operating model, one built on shared solutioning rather than siloed delivery, so the team focused on creating clear communication and information sharing channels as part of the overall delivery strategy.

Screenshot of the Talon.One campaign management interface for the Indigo plum loyalty program, showing a running campaign and the plum and Plum Plus membership tiers.

The Solution

Orium moved quickly to stand up the plum program in Talon.One, implementing the like-for-like loyalty logic that underpins Indigo's existing customer experience. The new implementation gives Indigo's business teams—not just engineers—direct control over promotions and loyalty program management, reducing reliance on technical resources for day-to-day operations.

Throughout delivery, Orium served as an active integration partner for the other teams on the project. Supporting the testing and development requirements of both internal Indigo resources and the other agencies engaged on the replatform, the team maintained the coordination needed to keep the overall program on track.

A close working relationship with Talon.One's own project-assigned team proved instrumental, enabling collaborative problem-solving on complex loyalty logic and keeping implementation moving at the pace the engagement demanded.

In parallel, Orium completed discovery and sandbox implementation of potential plum program enhancements ahead of schedule. With the new loyalty architecture already modeled and tested, the broader project team gained the forward-looking foundation they needed to continue development with confidence.

A woman and a man browsing and talking together while holding books in the aisle of an Indigo bookstore.

Outcomes & Next Steps

The Talon.One platform is on track to launch alongside the first phase of Indigo's replatform, supporting a seamless transition for Indigo's millions of loyalty members across Canada. From day one, customers will have access to their points balances, plum PLUS tier status, and a suite of launch promotions with business user training and handover documentation already completed to support ongoing operations.

Looking ahead, Talon.One will power the future evolution of the plum program. With new architecture already implemented in sandbox, Indigo enters that next phase with a meaningful head start, and a loyalty platform built for the flexibility and control a modern composable stack makes possible.