Escalate Retail’s 2009 Highlights
In our continuing series of highlighting the positive aspects of 2009 I had a recent conversation with Brian Johnson, Vice President and General Manager for Escalate Retail and he shared the following insights to their successes in 2009.
With Escalate Retail’s release of Ecometry Commerce Suite version 10.0.4 last December, customers now have PCI certified PA-DSS compliant payment application. This certification is extremely timely as starting July 2010; the PCI Council (comprised of the five largest credit card brands) will require retailers to use a PA-DSS compliant payment application. Multichannel and direct marketers that are looking for a compliant application to manage and fulfill orders across one or many channels can be assured that this latest Ecometry release is PA-DSS compliant. In addition, this release also included:
- Advanced Non-Offer Promotional Capabilities
- New User-Based Fraud Monitoring
- Intelligent Promotional Insert Functionality
Brian elaborated on 2009 and stated that Escalate Retail had the best financial performance (both as a percent and in dollars) and the strongest end-of-year cash balance in the history of the company.
Brian went on to say that in the last quarter of 2009 Escalate Retail had the strongest new written sales quarter in over two years and they added several new “logos” in 2009; implementing 15 new customers on the open systems platform.
In addition Brian stated that he has heard from many of their customers that they were above plan for 2009 – and almost all are predicting modest growth in 2010.
Additionally, here are a few of Escalate Retail’s upcoming releases for 2010:
10.1.1 – April/May 2010
- Settlement file auditing
- Lexis/Nexus external fraud integration
- Improved package checking station management
11.0.1 – 3rd Qtr 2010
- COBOL.net / phase I – which provides access to Microsoft tools and other advanced technology
- New Credit Card Reverse Authorization and Partial Authorization options (required by Visa/MasterCard)
- Enhanced Accounting Functionality around Three-Way Invoice Matching and Costing management
All in all Escalate Retail and most of their customers experienced a better 2009 than you would have thought possible.
Paul Sobota is vice president of F. Curtis Barry & Company, a multichannel operations and fulfillment consulting firm with expertise in multichannel systems, warehouse, call center, inventory, and benchmarking; Learn more online at: http://www.fcbco.com
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