One reason partnerships matter is that loyalty increasingly sits across organisational or technological boundaries.

For instance, data might sit with one team, customer communications with another, customer experience with yet another, and the technology responsible for activating an offer somewhere else, or even with multiple external vendors.

James Roth, General Manager of Operations at the Australian Loyalty Association, describes the breadth of the discipline.

He says, "What's unique about loyalty is it touches so many different disciplines. It touches data at the core of it, with data personalisation a big focus. But it also touches marketing, it touches emotional engagement with the brand, it touches branding. [Loyalty] touches so many different facets and skill sets within a business's ecosystem."

That breadth is precisely why collaboration matters. A loyalty proposition can be technically sophisticated but still fail to create relevance if the underlying customer understanding is poor. Equally, strong customer data is of limited value if a business cannot turn that understanding into an experience. Partnerships can provide a mechanism for connecting those different capabilities without requiring one organisation to become expert in everything.

Interoperability is becoming a greater necessity, and it creates room to evolve

Terry Mefsut, CEO & Co-Founder of Composed Digital, points to a movement away from large, closed technology environments and towards more interoperable solutions.

He says, "We're certainly seeing people moving away from the walled gardens of the big ecosystem monoliths.

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