Pitney Bowes
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Analyst Coverage: Philip Howard and David Norfolk
Established nearly 100 years ago, Pitney Bowes has traditionally focused on the complex and evolving world of commerce. The company is evolving to support the digital economy and expanding into high-growth markets, such as digital commerce, while continuing to innovate in its core shipping and mailing businesses.
In Digital Commerce, the company is focused on three areas: customer information management (understanding customers in context), location intelligence (transforming location and business data into enhanced insight) and customer engagement (delivering relevant and engaging interactions across the customer lifecycle). In addition, Pitney Bowes continues to invest in shipping and mailing (end-to-end shipping and mailing processes) as well as global ecommerce (cross-border shipping).
Pitney Bowes’ revenues (the company is listed on NYSE) were in excess of $3.8 billion USD in 2014. More than 1.5 million clients in approximately 100 countries around the world rely on products, solutions and services from Pitney Bowes.
Desktop Location Intelligence Solutions
Last Updated: 6th May 2016
Pitney Bowes provides an array of solutions for clients looking for geographic information system (GIS) and Location Intelligence (LI) solutions. Its solutions support the analysis of geographic data and the relationships that exist between conventional and geographic data, thereby enabling users to create and share information-rich maps together with spatial insights. Pitney Bowes believes that its desktop solutions offer a complete set of capabilities for GIS analysts. In addition, its server solutions provide an equally capable set of features for knowledge workers, such as business analysts, and for integration with third party applications, including most business intelligence (BI) tools.
Pitney Bowes' solutions go beyond "pretty maps." You can not only drill-down from an individual map but also use a map (or a detail therein) as the basis for further exploration of the data. For example, suppose some planning regulations were to require new housing developments to be on a slope of no more than 10o. A GIS analyst could simply filter a Pitney Bowes contour map to reveal areas of land that meet this slope criteria. This type of analytical operation is not what you would expect to be able to do with Google Maps.
Pitney Bowes also includes global geocoding for 249 countries and territories - 122 with point and street-level accuracy, which is used in the support of both analytical and time-sensitive operational use cases. The company also offers an extensive global data catalogue of 350+ geographic, demographic and industry-specific datasets that its customers use to augment or improve its analyses.
Pitney Bowes primarily employs a direct sales model based on locations in almost 100 countries worldwide. Its Location Intelligence and GIS solutions are applicable across many industries. The company's go-to-market approach is augmented through strategic alliances and an extensive partner network.
Pitney Bowes has more than 1.5 million clients in more than 100 countries, including 90 percent of the Fortune 500. More than 1 billion people around the world today use Pitney Bowes Location Intelligence and GIS solutions when they "check-in" or use location-sharing features on major social media platforms.
Pitney Bowes GIS clients include 24 of the top 25 insurers in the United States, 40 of the top 50 wireless telecommunications carriers worldwide and many government agencies around the globe. The product is used by clients in 125 countries across 16 languages.
MapInfo Pro is the company’s flagship product for desktop mapping. The latest release includes improvements to cartographic map output, performance and support for touchscreen tablets, improved data access, multi-lingual (Unicode) support, and integration with the Pitney Bowes Location Intelligence Suite to access global geocoding.
The MapInfo Pro Advanced edition introduces a performant raster grid analysis solution and an innovative format called MRR (Multi-Resolution Raster). This enables super-fast visualisation and analysis of large and highly detailed grid‑based spatial data on a continental or global scale. For example, wireless telecommunications can now analyse their coverage, irrespective of their area of interest, to find gaps and identify problem areas to improve services and locate under-served markets.
Pitney Bowes provides a range of consulting, implementation services, analytics, maintenance, training, and managed services. It offers full lifecycle support around the globe, including on-site, on-call, on-line and machine to machine. Pitney Bowes consultants have deep knowledge of Pitney Bowes products along with industry experience helping clients mitigate project risks and keep critical system performing well at all times. There is also an active online community that offers opportunities to ask questions and get tips and tricks from users across the globe.
Enterprise Location Intelligence Solutions
Last Updated: 4th May 2016
Pitney Bowes provides an array of solutions for clients looking for geographic information system (GIS) and Location Intelligence (LI) solutions. Its solutions support the analysis of geographic data and the relationships that exist between conventional and geographic data, thereby enabling users to create and share information-rich maps together with spatial insights. Pitney Bowes believes that its desktop solutions offer a complete set of capabilities for GIS analysts. In addition, their server solutions provide an equally capable set of features for knowledge workers, such as business analysts, and for integration with third party applications, including most business intelligence (BI) tools.
Pitney Bowes' solutions go beyond "pretty maps." You can not only drill-down from an individual map but also use a map (or a detail therein) as the basis for further exploration of the data. For example, suppose some planning regulations were to require new housing developments to be on a slope of no more than 10o. A GIS analyst could simply filter a Pitney Bowes contour map to reveal areas of land that meet this slope criteria. This type of analytical operation is not what you would expect to be able to do with Google Maps.
Pitney Bowes also includes global geocoding for 249 countries and territories - 122 with point and street-level accuracy, which is used in the support of both analytical and time-sensitive operational use cases. The company also offers an extensive global data catalogue of 350+ geographic, demographic and industry-specific datasets that its customers use to augment or improve its analyses.
Pitney Bowes primarily employs a direct sales model based on locations in almost 100 countries worldwide. Its Location Intelligence and GIS solutions are applicable across many industries. The company's go-to-market approach is augmented through strategic alliances and an extensive partner network.
Pitney Bowes has more than 1.5 million clients in more than 100 countries, including 90 percent of the Fortune 500. More than 1 billion people around the world today use Pitney Bowes Location Intelligence and GIS solutions when they "check-in" or use location-sharing features on major social media platforms.
Pitney Bowes GIS clients include 24 of the top 25 insurers in the United States, 40 of the top 50 wireless telecommunications carriers worldwide and many government agencies around the globe. The product is used by clients in 125 countries across 16 languages.
Master Location Data (MLD) is an enterprise product that is currently only available in the United States, although the company plans to extend coverage internationally. With 170+ million records, MLD provides the most complete coverage of addresses across the United States and (theoretically) the highest possible number of matches with source business data. The idea here is that you can associate details such as the materials used to construct a particular building with that address, or the services provided to that address, via a unique identifier that Pitney Bowes attaches to every record. If the building represents office premises, for example, then you could associate it with suitable business information from Dun & Bradstreet. This process facilitates data enrichment and analysis for faster, more informed decision making. Needless to say, Pitney Bowes supports "addressing" of virtually all mailable and non-mailable US addresses.
Other notable features include industry-specific modules, a software development kit (SDK) for creation of repetitive operations and integration, and geo-specific APIs (application program interfaces). Pitney Bowes customers routinely augment their use of the desktop technology with Spectrum Spatial Analyst, the company's browser-based mapping application that allows maps and spatial information to be shared with executives, business users, partners, customers and citizens via any Web browser or mobile device.
The Pitney Bowes Location Intelligence (LI) Suite is comprised of modular, server-based solutions that can be integrated with other Pitney Bowes and third-party solutions. In the case of its own software, this particularly includes its Spectrum Technology Platform as well as its Customer Engagement Solutions. With respect to third party integration, the product has been integrated with Actuate, BIRT, SAP Business Objects, Oracle OBIEE, QlikView, Tableau, MicroStrategy and Excel. It also supports integration with any home-grown or third-party application that supports industry standard Web services or APIs. There is also a module that runs on Hadoop (MapReduce is generated), and there are five Geo-specific APIs (GeoLife, GeoEnhance, GeoSearch, GeoTax and Geo911) that allow developers to embed location intelligence into applications. More information about these APIS can be found here.
Location Intelligence has three primary functions: enrichment, analysis and visualisation. The first of these is based on the company's geocoding and global data catalogue and can also leverage the company's Spectrum platform for cleansing and enriching data, though third party data management tools may also be used. Analysis, in addition to geo-processing and BI integration, also provides facilities such as optimised travel routing and directions by time and distance.
Finally, visualisation supports both MRR (multi-resolution raster) and vector-based data. The former, which has been added to the product only recently, as mentioned in the desktop technology section, supports the visualisation and analysis of topographic, satellite and other raster data types with no degradation of spatial resolution. The company's interactive visualisation can be deployed on-premises or in the cloud as the customer requires, and it supports any browser or mobile (touch-based devices).
Pitney Bowes provides a range of consulting, implementation services, analytics, maintenance, training, and managed services. It offers full lifecycle support around the globe, including on-site, on-call, on-line and machine to machine. Pitney Bowes consultants have deep knowledge of Pitney Bowes products along with industry experience helping clients mitigate project risks and keep critical system performing well at all times. There is also an active online community that offers opportunities to ask questions and get tips and tricks from users across the globe.
Interactive Personalised Media – EngageOne Video
Last Updated: 29th January 2016
EngageOne Video is an extension to Pitney Bowes' Customer Engagement solutions (see http://www.pitneybowes.com/us/customer-engagement-marketing.html). As opposed to a one-size-fits-all video experience, EngageOne is designed to deliver a customised video for each person. The video content is personalised in real-time, and the flow of the video can be interactively manipulated by the viewer. Moreover, EngageOne integrates with other elements of Customer Engagement, including predictive analytics (best next engagement), tracking and reporting. Early users of the technology have reported impressive results, resulting in significantly improved engagement and satisfaction, and reduced interactions with call centres.
As a general principle, the use of video makes explaining complexity much simpler, particularly when consumers are increasingly short of time. Providing personalisation extends these benefits further. Proven use cases include explaining bills and statements to reduce bill shock and cancellations, explaining insurance policies to eliminate misunderstanding, and simply describing financial products to increase sales.
Needless to say, it is not easy to describe a visual experience in words, and we therefore recommend trying the demonstration at http://mypbvideo.com/bloor. This demo is very American-ised, but it will give you a good idea of how EngageOne Video works. Remember that each customer can choose how to portray their brand and have the style and languages they prefer.
Pitney Bowes uses a direct sales model based on locations in almost 100 countries world-wide. Its solutions are applicable across industries. The company's go-to-market approach is also augmented through strategic alliances and an extensive partner network.
Pitney Bowes delivers Customer Engagement Solutions, including interactive personalised media like EngageOne Video, to national, international and global brands in financial services, insurance, telecommunications, healthcare, public sector, utilities and retail vertical industries, amongst others.
More than 900 customers around the globe use Pitney Bowes Customer Engagement Solutions and technology. These customers are well known names in finance, telecommunications, insurance, public sector, retail and utilities. With respect specifically to EngageOne Video, the most well-known customer is Chevron but other customers span insurance, healthcare and telecommunications. A number of customer videos - in a variety of languages - are posted on the Pitney Bowes Website.
Creating an EngageOne Video is like making any other video - in other words you need camera, lights and action - except for what is the key differentiator here: the way that the video is interactive and personalised. To achieve this, what you are actually creating is a series of snippets of video, which are put together at run-time for each particular user. These snippets are linked by real-time information and analytics with interactive prompts. The user selects the topic they are interested in via a mouse click, or touchscreen press and the video plays from the selected point. Thus, what the user sees is an interactive and personalised video, which can be viewed on a variety of platforms, including desktop and mobile computing devices. Moreover, the user can watch the video in bite-sized chunks as their schedule allows. EngageOne Video itself is available for either on premises or via cloud-based deployment.
EngageOne Video can be implemented as a stand-alone product, but there are additional capabilities when deployed in conjunction with Pitney Bowes' Customer Engagement solutions. This is because predictive capabilities from the latter can be used to drive the generation of videos. In other words, the particular snippets used for this customer can be derived from analytics suggesting the best next action or engagement for this specific customer. Similarly, there is feedback from EngageOne to the Customer Engagement environment, providing measurable results through integrated activity tracking and reporting, which can be displayed via a dashboard. It is even possible to use the predictive capabilities in the Customer Engagement solutions to forecast how users will make use of videos. Facilities are provided to embed EngageOne videos into existing systems and workflows.
Pitney Bowes Global Services delivers EngageOne Video solutions using a methodology that includes an initial scoping meeting, experience workshop, business case and project plan, storyboard creation and video production plus the technical implementation. Typically, this takes 90 to 120 days.
More generally, Pitney Bowes provides a range of consulting, implementation services, analytics, maintenance, training and managed services. It offers full lifecycle support around the globe, including on-site, on-call, on-line and machine to machine. Its consultants develop industry knowledge as well as deep expertise around Pitney Bowes products and solutions. There is also an active online community that offers opportunities to ask questions and get tips and tricks from users across the globe.
Pitney Bowes Spectrum Technology Platform
Last Updated: 27th February 2016
The Spectrum Technology platform is the foundation of the Pitney Bowes Customer Information Management solution. It is a modular platform, delivering comprehensive data management and governance capabilities that includes almost all the sort of functions that one would expect from such a platform: data profiling, data matching, data cleansing, a data stewardship module, data integration (including ETL, data federation and change data capture) and master data management (see http://www.pitneybowes.com/us/customer-information-management.html). The only thing that one might argue that it is lacking is a business glossary. On the other hand, it has a number of capabilities that one would not expect, especially around relationship discovery, entity resolution, advanced analytics and Location Intelligence (see http://www.pitneybowes.com/us/location-intelligence.html), which are particular strengths of Pitney Bowes' offerings. Further, there is a Global Sentry module, which identifies people on government watch lists and, in the United States, there is an Enterprise Tax module that determines the tax jurisdictions for an address for accurate sales/use tax, property tax, payroll tax and insurance premium tax calculations. In addition, Spectrum integrates with Pitney Bowes' Customer Engagement Solutions (see http://www.pitneybowes.com/us/customer-engagement-marketing.html) to provide a combination that supports a single, contextual view of the customer along with more effective engagement via EngageOne Video, which provides an interactive and personalised video solution.
It is also noteworthy that the Spectrum Technology Platform includes analytics capabilities which are based on the Portrait Software solution. Analytics is modularised and includes visualisation capabilities, predictive analytics, real-time customer scoring, and an interaction optimiser and uplift capability, which is designed to help marketers focus on the audience that is most likely to accept a particular offer or which will produce the greatest return. Alternatively, it is possible to embed predictive models built on third party products into Spectrum data flows through the use of an industry standard interface called PMML (Predictive Modelling Mark-up Language).
Pitney Bowes uses a direct sales model for coverage across its key geographies in the Americas, EMEA and APAC with an extensive partner network in other locations. Its solutions are applicable across industries, but the sales teams and solutions are vertically aligned with a use-case (or solution) focused approach that is relevant to that industry and personas within that industry. The company's go-to-market approach is also augmented through strategic alliances that are global in nature, but operationalised at a regional level. In recent years, Pitney Bowes has also addressed a broader audience of users through its SaaS offerings. These include APIs as part of Spectrum On-Demand hosted on AWS, apps on marketplaces like Office 365 Excel and NetSuite, and Amazon Machine Images on the Amazon B2B Marketplace that are available for use on an hourly, monthly or yearly subscription basis.
Spectrum Technology Platform customers are spread across many industry sectors, with most of the client base represented within the mid-to-large enterprise segment and the Global 500. These include users of the company's legacy data quality and integration products as well as those that have adopted or are new users of the Spectrum data platform.
The Spectrum Technology Platform uses a services-based approach with an orchestration layer that links and integrates the various data management and analytics functions together to deliver composite business services focused on business outcomes.
Perhaps most interesting from a technical perspective is that both the MDM repository (technically, the Data Hub module) and the system repository (which may be distributed) are based on graph databases. Or, more accurately, MDM is based on the market leading graph database (Neo4J) and the system repository on what can best be described as a hybrid document-graph databases (OrientDB). These have significant advantages when it comes to exploring master data and metadata respectively, because they allow you to see and understand relationships more easily and quickly. In the case of metadata this makes processes such as data lineage much easier while in the case of MDM there are specific abilities (Relationship Analysis) built into the product that allow you to model and explore customers and their structures and their relationships to products, locations and other details that would not normally be easy to achieve, let alone be operationalised for real-time systems. The use of Neo4J, a fully ACID property graph database, enables users of Pitney Bowes' MDM capabilities to craft and deploy a contextualised view of their most important data assets and their relationships inside operational systems, and not just for the purpose of analytics.
Neo4J's claim to fame is its ability to cater to high volume, real-time transactional queries where many relational databases fall short, given the cost of complex joins to understand highly connected data structures. In an increasingly connected world where everything from devices, to computers to wearables to assets to social and professional networks intersect, organisations can struggle to understand this increasing depth and complexity in data relationships. And without that understanding it is equally difficult to derive new insights from all of this information, without a strategy to evolve and enhance existing MDM infrastructure. If that isn't reason enough to drive adoption of this technology, for those organisations choosing to walk before they run, this technology allows organisations to take a much more agile approach to MDM.
The company is also building out industry specific applications that leverage the Spectrum platform, there is a common set of APIs across all functions, and both Hadoop and cloud connectivity and deployment options are provided, including certifications for Cloudera, Hortonworks, IBM Apache and Map R.
Pitney Bowes provides implementation services, support, enhancement and upgrade services, managed services offerings, advisory services, business consulting and solution add-ons, as well as complementary products that span both data services and predictive analytics. It also relies heavily on a partner network to deliver its services in regions such as Latin America, Middle East, Eastern Europe and Japan.
Pitney Bowes’ Customer Engagement Solutions
Last Updated: 21st January 2016
Pitney Bowes' suite of Customer Engagement Solutions include a variety of modules for communication archiving, call centre support and transformation, customer-engaged billing, customer self-service, digital (and physical) document delivery, and interactive personalised video (EngageOne Video: see http://www.pitneybowes.com/uk/customer-engagement-marketing/synchronised-communications-execution/engageone-video-for-real-time-content.html). Ultimately, all of these are about supporting omni-channel customer interactions with the aim of increasing real customer lifetime value. Built-in predictive analytics enable such things as next best action.
Customer Engagement Solutions integrate with both Pitney Bowes Location Intelligence (LI) solutions (see http://www.pitneybowes.com/uk/location-intelligence.html) and the company's Spectrum data management platform (see http://www.pitneybowes.com/uk/customer-information-management.html). The latter is particularly relevant because the master data management (MDM) software that forms a part of Spectrum plays a fundamental role in understanding customer data and exploring it. Having said that, it is also possible for Customer Engagement solutions to work with third party MDM products. However, as a complete suite we should say that Spectrum, when used in conjunction with Customer Engagement, provides a broader and more comprehensive offering than anything else we have seen in the market.
Pitney Bowes uses a direct sales model based on locations in almost 100 countries world-wide. Its GIS (geographic information system) solutions are applicable across industries. The company's go-to-market approach is also augmented through strategic alliances and an extensive partner network.
Pitney Bowes focuses on delivering Customer Engagement Solutions to national, international and global brands in financial services, insurance, telecommunications, healthcare, public sector, utilities and retail vertical industries.
More than 900 customers around the globe use Pitney Bowes Customer Engagement solutions and technology. These customers are well known names in finance, telecommunications, insurance, public sector, retail and utilities. Many of these are quoted on Pitney Bowes' website.
Pitney Bowes recognises that its clients have already made significant investments in technologies that support marketing, CRM, and communication initiatives. They cannot simply replace everything wholesale in their environment. As a result, Pitney Bowes' approach allows organisations to pick and choose the capabilities required to meet a specific business need and then to proceed in an incremental manner beyond that, as their needs change.
Pitney Bowes Customer Engagement Solutions focus in two areas:
- Personalised Customer Engagement, providing real-time insight into customer behaviour to dynamically guide customer interactions. Specific capabilities within this area include Customer and Marketing Analytics to identify and segment customers for better targeting and campaign engagement results; Customer Contact and Interaction Management so that everyday communications can be turned into profit-building engagements by ensuring that each customer contact is relevant and engaging across every channel; and Best Next Engagement to deliver the "best," most relevant next communication through analysis of each customer's individual situation, as it is occurring, to improve customer experience and increase revenue.
- Synchronised Communications Execution, to monitor, synchronise and manage omni-channel communications in the customer channels of choice via Interactive Personalised Media that allows the creation of individual, interactive, real-time video, powered by EngageOne Video, and other types of online experiences; Print and Digital Communications Management to strengthen customer relationships - and maximise postal savings -- with unified and reliable delivery of customer communications across all channels; and Communications Archiving to benefit from real-time storage and retrieval of all customer interactions to support compliance and inform customer engagement strategy.
These technologies are delivered as an integrated suite and Pitney Bowes also integrates with external data in environments such as SAP or Salesforce.com. Rules-based relevance is augmented with Best Next Engagement algorithms to support predictive communications. The platform collects interaction history from all channels in support of omni-channel experiences. The technology delivers a variety of communication and message types from once-and-done campaign production, always-on marketing automation, real time delivery of recommendations, notifications, offers and surveys, batch and real-time generation of business communications (for example, statements, bills, policies, correspondence), and ad-hoc call centre correspondence. In addition, the platform provides a self-service portal option with both Web and mobile access and interactive video as a rich media channel.
Pitney Bowes provides a range of consulting, implementation services, analytics, maintenance, training and managed services. It offers full lifecycle support around the globe, including on-site, on-call, on-line and machine to machine. Its consultants develop industry knowledge as well as deep expertise around Pitney Bowes products and solutions. There is also an active online community that offers opportunities to ask questions and get tips and tricks from users across the globe.
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