Pitney Bowes, the very image of legacy IT, is hardly your father’s Pitney Bowes anymore.
The company that will celebrate its 100th birthday in 2020 built its reputation for providing long-lasting shipping and mailing machines, but a lot of people don’t realize that it made the switch to software and services long ago and has been a big-time IT player for nearly a generation.
Pushing ahead, Pitney Bowes on April 26 officially launched its Commerce Cloud, a commerce enabler that provides access to solutions, analytics and APIs across the full spectrum of commerce. The apps in the cloud do all the things a business would require: identify customers, locate opportunities, enable communications, enable shipping from anywhere to everywhere and manage payments.
Partnering With Several Highly Regarded Companies
The Stamford, Conn.-based company said it is partnering with market-leading cloud technology companies, including Amazon Web Services, Salesforce.com, GE Digital, Microsoft, Apigee (API distribution), MongoDB (open-source database) and Okta (authentication), to deliver an efficient digital client, rapid product development and scalability.
Thus, Pitney Bowes is expanding its software/services business into the $4 billion mailing sector and the $40 billion digital commerce and shipping market. Its products help its 1.5 million customers improve how they communicate, send and pay in the borderless and connected world of commerce, the company said.
Pitney Bowes will run Commerce Cloud on AWS infrastructure and operate alongside the AWS Marketplace. PB already has launched seven services in the AWS Marketplace for Location Intelligence and Customer Information Management and also created a Cloud Center of Excellence, which provides access to available tools and technology from AWS.
The Center of Excellence will help create new enterprise solutions provided by Pitney Bowes in the AWS Cloud, the company said.
The Commerce Cloud was introduced April 26 at a press event in New York City. Through the new cloud, businesses of all sizes can use PCs, mobile devices, connected metering devices or APIs to do a full range of functions. These include shipping, mailing, e-commerce, location intelligence, customer information management, customer engagement and payment solutions that enable all types of commercial transactions.
Key Components of Commerce Cloud
Key components of the Commerce Cloud are as follows:
—SendProTM Suite: Upgrades office shipping for businesses of all sizes by streamlining the sending processes—from addressing and label printing, to package tracking and payment with a multi-carrier shipping solution.
—Global trade solutions: Calculating duties and taxes or simply classifying products for global trade is no easy task. Helps retailers, logistics providers and posts navigate these complexities while expanding cross-border reach.
—Shipping Application Program Interfaces (APIs): These facilitate cloud-based office shipping and e-commerce order fulfillment, through which software providers and systems integrators can offer U.S. Postal Service services to generate shipping labels, access discounted rates, track packages from origin through delivery, and provide simple, effective reports for managing postal shipments and expenses.
—Local intelligence solutions: Incorporates extensive geodata into everyday business processes and workflows to help advance their own innovations, products and services.
—Payment solutions: Businesses can finally manage payment processing as part of a seamless digital experience, with consolidated billing and flexible payment options.
Pitney Bowes already has several solutions available via the Pitney Bowes Commerce Cloud, including pbSmartPostage, an online shipping and mailing service; Spectrum On Demand, data quality and enrichment solutions; Universal Address Management, address validation and correction; Relay Hub, a cloud-based mailing service; and EngageOneVideo, personalized and interactive video.
Pitney Bowes said it will introduce additional offerings to the Commerce Cloud throughout 2016.