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Pitney Bowes Turns to Aria Systems for Prompt Billing

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Pitney Bowes Inc. (PBI - Free Report) recently announced that it has selected San Francisco-based software company Aria Systems’ cloud-based monetization platform as the primary billing and monetization element for its Commerce Cloud Platform.

Cloud-based Monetization to Benefit Pitney

Aria Systems has earned a solid reputation for helping clients improve their subscription and usage-based revenues. Biggies like Adobe Systems Inc. (ADBE - Free Report) , Koninklijke Philips N.V. (PHG - Free Report) and Zipcar have resorted to Aria Systems’ cloud-based monetization platform for carrying out billing and monetization management tasks. This frees up lengthy IT queue of Aria Systems’ clients by delegating these functions to respective business owners.

Deploying Aria Systems’ cloud-based monetization platform will help Pitney Bowes offer state-of-the-art billing solutions – thereby meeting the rapidly changing client demands. The software company’s proven technology can accelerate “go-to-market timing” of new products by a whopping 700%, reducing delivery time from more than a year to a few weeks.

With Aria Systems’ aid, Pitney Bowes can accelerate the launch of new offerings and services without exhausting internal IT resources much. This, in turn, will assist the company launch, change, and add Commerce Cloud services as per customer needs, thus enhancing customer satiation.

Commerce Cloud Platform Going Strong

Pitney Bowes launched Commerce Cloud, along with several SaaS-based products and solutions, during second-quarter 2016. Ever since its launch, the company has attracted more than 1 million visitors to the Commerce Cloud portal. Some of the noteworthy products introduced on the Commerce Cloud include a state-of-the-art location intelligence solution and SmartLink – a digital technology solution connecting the existing US installed base of postage meters to the Pitney Bowes Commerce Cloud.

Pitney Bowes believes that this Commerce Cloud platform will act as the foundation for all its products and solutions, enhancing its digital capabilities and web-based solutions. It can be inferred that perfecting Commerce Cloud’s performance with Aria Systems is likely to act as a major growth catalyst for the company over a long period of time.

Near-Term Challenges Undermine Prospects

Of late, Pitney Bowes’ financials have been affected by escalating marketing and ERP implementation expenses. Going forward, the company expects rising capital expenditure in 2016 related to the ERP program (in areas including process automation of manual procedures, expanding web capabilities for client self-service, and additions of new functionality) will drive operating costs, thereby, raising the pressure on margins.

These apart, foreign currency fluctuations have also been hurting the company’s sales. Strengthening of the U.S. dollar has proved to be a headwind for the company’s e-commerce business by making purchases more expensive and lowering cross-border sales. While the global ecommerce platforms are located in the U.S. and U.K., the majority of consumers making purchases through these platforms are situated in a limited number of foreign countries. In this regard, the recently-concluded Brexit vote has raised uncertainty about the company’s digital commerce business. This eCommerce solutions provider expects currency volatility to continue hampering its cross-border businesses.

Pitney Bowes currently holds a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell). A better-ranked stock in the sector is Seiko Epson Corp. (SEKEY - Free Report) with a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).

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