Within most IT organizations, a clear line is emerging between systems of record, typically defined as ERP applications, and a broad range of systems of engagement, which organizations are deploying as part of an effort to get closer to the customer. Often missing from that equation is some form of a transaction system that actually monetizes all those engagements.
Looking to fill that void, Avangate this week unfurled a summer release of the Avangate Commerce Solution that not only makes it simpler to manage the ordering process, but also provides organizations with access to analytics to identify transaction patterns and trends.
Michael Ni, chief marketing officer for Avangate, says e-commerce is emerging as a mission-critical application for driving transactions. Companies have invested heavily in systems of engagement, but now they need a simpler way to connect all that engagement to a backend transaction system, says Ni. As a cloud application environment, Ni says Avangate Commerce Solution is designed to make it easier to set up an e-commerce platform that multiple systems of engagement can plug into via, for example, application programming interfaces (APIs).
Obviously, many organizations have been relying on systems such as mainframes to process transactions for decades. But Ni says that the emergence of a service economy enabled by digital technologies, which span everything from social media to the Internet of Things (IoT), is going to generate trillions of dollars in economic value and requires a more flexible approach to transactions.
Organizations are profoundly rethinking the relationships between various classes of applications. In fact, the average organization is now running more applications than ever. But unless an application ultimately connects back to some sort of transaction system, it’s really hard to think of that application as actually being strategic to the business.