eCommerceNews New Zealand - Technology news for digital commerce decision-makers
Story image
Pitney Bowes adds geography-specific data to commerce marketplace
Wed, 19th Sep 2018
FYI, this story is more than a year old

Global eCommerce solutions provider Pitney Bowes is venturing farther into the world of data licensing, as it now offers more than 1500 geography-specific data sets for purchase.

The new offering is designed to simplify commerce for customers through the company's Software and Data Marketplace. The marketplace was designed to be a self-service portal for businesses in different sectors, including retail, insurance, adtech, real estate, and financial services.

The data sets available for purchase include addressing, world streets, world boundaries, world points of interest, property attributes, world demographics, and GeoEnrichment (demographics, risk, and properties).

Registered users can explore and search the Pitney Bowes data catalogue, instantly download sample data, and visualise and layer data on a map to ensure the data meets their needs.

"When we launched our Data business almost two years ago, we saw an opportunity to apply nearly a hundred years of experience processing names and addresses for the betterment of business professionals,” comments Pitney Bowes Software EVP and president, Bob Guidotti.

He adds that that belief was confirmed with the help of clients and partners, who found that vetting and contracting data suppliers is both time-consuming and difficult.

“That's only the beginning of the challenges professionals face when sourcing data. Intake, quality control, modifying and ingesting data, applying updates, assuring interoperability, and providing controlled access to internal data users is tedious, requires expertise, and is expensive.

According to Pitney Bowes, the new purchase capability allows users to transact online and download purchases through digital files. The company also makes software development kits (SDKs) available for every data set download, so that users receive products and updates automatically.

The company states that users can customise their purchase preferences with the ability to select data for specific regions, identify preferred file formats and select the license service terms that best meet their organisational needs.

“The Software and Data Marketplace will ease that pain for users, while also providing a new revenue stream for Pitney Bowes that will allow us to continuously invest in this growth business. It's a win-win for everyone,” continues Guidotti.

The Software and Data Marketplace will continue to evolve over time, adding more learning resources, expanded data content and products, more data samples, enhanced map visualization functionality, and additional payment options.