Improve your mobile deployment for a better management
12th December 2020
“Patrons interact with us at various touch points at BookMyShow : the Box office, the gates, or in the arena, and at every one of these we use handheld devices. The Famoco ecosystem, of versatile devices closely integrated with the simple in house MDM, is a perfect fit for our operations, enabling us to spend less of our time on setup and more of it on execution.”
– Pervez Dubash, Deputy General Manager at BookMyShow
The issue of a heterogeneous infrastructure
BookMyShow is the largest online ticketing platform in India, allowing millions of Indian people to buy tickets for movies, theaters, sporting events, or even conferences. Operating in hundreds of cities, their main goal is to provide the best experience possible to their customers, and especially during live events. Involving a large number of participants, events require a great coordination to provide a seamless experience that starts on the online platform.
Customers begin their journey by purchasing their tickets online to validate and reclaim them at a first touchpoint, which is the box office. Then, they continue their journey by validating their tickets at the gate of the live event (graphic design at the end of the article).
To manage this user journey as easily as possible, the main point is to have a uniform system to validate tickets at each touchpoint, starting at the box offices. But according to Pervez Dubash, Deputy General Manager at BookMyShow, the company has a “very heterogeneous infrastructure” which presents management issues.
A need for Android mobile devices
By using Windows mobile devices for access control, basic NFC readers for in-arena experiences and no mobile devices in box offices, deploying the solution across the country was challenging. BookMyShow has therefore needed to implement Android mobile devices to simplify the fleet management on the field.
Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, Chennai, BookMyShow is present in several metropolises across India and has to be agile enough to deploy devices from a city to another. It was essential for the company to look for a Mobile Device Management platform to quickly handle the deployment of hundreds of terminals on the field.
Moreover, with some of the live events being outdoor, it was essential to have an integrated scanner head to validate tickets. Simple cameras weren’t adapted to the needs: they made it difficult to flash a QR code on a smartphone because of the sun, screen shade, or even a bad camera angle.
The answer of Famoco
So how did BookMyShow find a solution? To do so, the company has joined hands with Famoco and has adopted the PX320 rugged mobile device. Resistant to outdoor environments and equipped with an integrated scanner head, BookMyShow can now seamlessly validate tickets on the entire user journey.
The PX320 also comes with the Famoso OS, the private Android for businesses. Based on AOSP (Android Open Source Project) to create a business dedicated environment, this OS is combined with the Famoco MDM to offer a simple and fast mobile deployment across the country.
Around 35 000 tickets validated in a matter of hours
With 750 Famoco devices on the field, BookMyShow noticed a real improvement in the logistics and management of the mobile deployment. The setup time has greatly shortened thanks to the MDM, going from 15 minutes to nearly 15 seconds (depending on the number of devices). During the U2 Tour in India in December 2019, on which the cashless payment company AtomX was also involved, BookMyShow was able to validate around 35 000 tickets in a matter of hours.
Their mobile device deployment has become much easier. Pervez Dubash seems proud to have handled multiple major events in only one weekend, which was the most crunched one of 2020: the Supersonic Music Festival 2020, Auto Expo 2020, Blues Festival, football matches of the Indian Super League, and all in 3 different cities.
