Vendor Profile Avangate: Turnkey Digital Commerce for Software, SaaS, and Online Services Christine Dover IDC OPINION Avangate is a turnkey digital commerce provider offering an ecommerce platform, a subscription billing engine, a channel partner order and revenue management solution, integrated global payments, and an expanding worldwide digital affiliate network. Avangate's technology components and Avangate marketing and merchant services are all part of a modular, integrated platform based on Avangate's own IP. Avangate was founded in 2006 and has over 200 employees worldwide, with corporate offices in Redwood Shores, California. In October 2013, Avangate became one of the family of growing technology companies owned by San Francisco-based Francisco Partners. Highlights include: Since the launch of Avangate's commerce solutions in 2006, the company has focused on the needs of the digital and online services economy, enabling merchants to serve their own customers across all touch points and simplify and scale their subscription business and enable smarter payments to profitably grow and disrupt new markets. Avangate grew its customer base by over 600 companies in 2013 and added more than 800 in 2014, reaching over 3,800 clients by the end of that year. In addition, Avangate moved successfully upmarket into the large enterprise segment with customers such as HP Software. Avangate launched significant new functionalities in 2014, including revenue recovery tools, authorization dashboard, B2B ecommerce support, marketing tools, customer experience management, new APIs, SEPA compliance, and other platformwide performance enhancements. Avangate is well positioned to take advantage of the growing opportunity in the digital commerce market and is currently growing at over twice the pace of the overall market itself (according to IDC estimates, the digital commerce market grew 25.5% in 2013 over 2012). IN THIS VENDOR PROFILE This IDC Vendor Profile describes Avangate, a turnkey digital commerce provider offering an ecommerce platform, a subscription billing engine, a channel partner order and revenue management solution, integrated global payments, and an expanding worldwide digital affiliate network. Founded in 2006, Avangate has corporate offices in Redwood Shores, California, with additional offices in the Netherlands (headquarters), the United Kingdom, Romania, and Taiwan. Backed by Francisco Partners, Avangate is enabling more than 3,800 companies in the new services economy to service their customers across all touch points and simplify and scale their subscription business and enable smarter payments to profitably grow and disrupt new markets. January 2015, IDC #253825
SITUATION OVERVIEW Company Overview Avangate primarily focuses on customers that sell digital goods and services. These customers include software, SaaS, and online services companies in sizes ranging from start-ups to midsize enterprises and including divisions of some very large enterprises. Avangate's 3,800+ customers include Absolute Software, Bitdefender, Brocade, FICO, HP Software, Kaspersky Lab, and Metaio. Avangate is PCI compliant and manages all of the back-end and marketing services that software and online services companies need to be successful such as order management across touch points, subscription billing, integrated fulfillment, risk and fraud management, 24 x 7 shopper support in multiple languages, and global payments in over 133 currencies, 31 languages, and 45 payment methods. The company has received numerous awards over the past three years, including the Gold Stevie Award for "Company of the Year Computer Software Up to 250 Employees" in 2014; being a finalist in three categories for the 2014 SIIA CODiE Awards Best Commerce, ecommerce & Billing, and Subscription Management; winner of the 2014 CODiE Awards in 2013 for Best ecommerce & Billing Platform; and being in the list of Red Herring Top 100 Global, 2013, and AlwaysOn Global 250 Companies to Watch, 2012. Awards such as these are important to the recognition of emerging companies and a good indicator of a quality company. They are evaluated by independent industry and technology-specific judges against a standard set of criteria. In addition, Avangate received multiple certifications such as the PCI DSS Level 1 certification (a payment card industry data security standard) in 2009 and has maintained that certification level ever since. Other certifications include SSAE-16 and SAS 70 Type II. These types of certifications are extremely important to potential customers evaluating digital commerce solutions that include payment processing and secure credit card storage. Financial Performance Avangate is one of the portfolio of technology companies owned by San Francisco-based Francisco Partners. Francisco Partners acquired Avangate in October 2013. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed at the time; however, Dow Jones noted that Francisco Partners typically invests between $50 million and $2 billion in its deals. The capital infusion from Francisco Partners enabled Avangate to invest more heavily in product development and support Avangate's expansion into Brazil and Japan. Use of the investment can be seen in the growth in the number of employees (from 110 in 2012 to over 200 in 2014) and the depth of functionality included in the quarterly releases, particularly in 2014. In Worldwide Digital Commerce Applications 2014-2018 Forecast and 2013 Vendor Shares (IDC #251185, July 2014), IDC estimated Avangate's revenue for 2013 at $43 million, representing a growth rate of 58.1% over the previous year. This growth is attributed to the rapid acquisition of new customers over 600 were added in 2013 and over 800 more in 2014. Growth was also attributed to the flexible revenue share pricing model that Avangate uses Avangate's revenue grows as Avangate's customers grow their online businesses. In addition, in 2014, Avangate began to add large enterprise customers, notably HP Software, Brocade, and Software AG, to its traditional mix of start- 2015 IDC #253825 2
ups to midsize enterprises. The success these large enterprises are having with Avangate will attract additional large enterprises and support Avangate's continued strong revenue growth. Customers and Contracts Over the past two years, Avangate has rapidly grown its customer base from over 2,300 customers in October 2012 to over 3,000 by the end of 2013, and currently, its customers number over 3,800. Avangate offers three programs for customers to get started, all clearly defined on the company's Web site (avangate.com) and delineated for start-ups/growth (which is primarily self-service and customers can get started in minutes), standard edition, and the full SkyCommerce Suite. All three offerings are based on the revenue share method and include the cost of payment processing and merchant account fees in the service. There are no setup fees, and most customers can cancel at any time. Avangate's customer retention is currently running at 95%, an impressive number given the liberal cancellation policy. Avangate's customers frequently express high satisfaction with Avangate's customer service. Customers want to be associated with a fast-growing, up-and-coming company and see Avangate in that light. Customers have said that they appreciate the fast development pace and the quarterly releases that give them the functionality they need to continue to grow their online businesses at a rapid pace. Company Strategy Market Strategy Avangate commerce solutions are being used by customers to sell into both the B2B and B2C spaces in the fast-growing digital commerce market. Avangate, like other companies, has seen that software, SaaS, and online services companies are shifting from selling one product at a time to instead focusing on continuous service-based offerings. Companies have also recognized the convergence between B2B businesses implementing a more B2C-type customer acquisition strategy and B2C businesses beginning to implement channel strategies. In addition, the vertical focus on the software and XaaS (anything as a service) markets has led Avangate to include functionalities such as revenue recovery tools, salesforce.com connector, usage-based billing, freemiums, and other flexible recurring revenue models. IDC believes Avangate is well positioned to take advantage of this market opportunity. The Americas, primarily North America, is currently the largest digital commerce applications market, and Avangate has its sights set squarely on success in the region. Avangate's corporate office in the United States moved in September 2014 to a much larger location in Silicon Valley, and the company has increased its personnel in the United States by approximately 50% since 2012. Demonstrating its success in the region, Avangate has grown the share of Americas-based revenue from about 15% in 2012 to 36% in 2014, along with doubling the number of customers. In addition, Avangate continues to expand into emerging markets such as Brazil, Russia, China, and India, supporting local and regional payment methods specific to those locals such as Boleto Bancario in Brazil. Currently, Avangate offers over 45 payment methods to sell into over 150 countries with support for 133 currencies and 31 languages. 2015 IDC #253825 3
Avangate is also continuing to invest in building solutions for the new services economy elearning, ebooks, self-publishing, and more. Disruptive start-ups in these areas need tools such as Avangate's Revenue Recovery Tool (RRT) that enables customers to recover revenue lost due to involuntary churn (e.g., often because of expired credit cards). Product Strategy By leveraging the investment made by Francisco Partners, Avangate has upped the ante on product development. While the company continues to provide four releases annually, the number of new features in each release has grown. For example: Summer 2014 included enhanced online self-service; brandable, secure mobile cart; call center console; automated commerce triggers; secure management of cards on file; expanded chargeback and fraud management; expanded global support and compliance for Russian and Portuguese customer support, expanded local support numbers, and SEPA and EU consumer rights adoption; authorization dashboard; expanded customer and subscription reports; intelligent payment routing; and payments across multiple touch points. Fall 2014 included partner and reseller portals; expanded developer tools; salesforce.com adapter; extended recurring and currency support for purchase order automation; extended outsource operations and automation for financial reconciliation, chargeback, processor management, and refund handling; expanded global payments including EU direct debits for France, Spain, and Belgium; and enhanced upselling, lead management, Google Analytics integration, and A/B testing and reporting. Two new solutions were added as well: Revenue Recovery Tool is an add-on solution that improves conversion and retention for recurring revenue lost to passive churn. Avangate says that typical recovery has averaged 15-20% of lost orders, with early adopters recovering over 40% of churned revenue. Growth Edition is a solution package and pricing designed for both start-ups and innovative divisions of larger companies seeking an alternative to traditional payment providers as they launch and grow new recurring revenue streams. Avangate's future road map includes capabilities for cloud-enabled online services and expanded capabilities around big data, B2B ecommerce, extendable analytics, distributor solutions, and mobile and social commerce. Avangate Solutions Avangate's integrated commerce suite, SkyCommerce, is designed exclusively for software, SaaS, and online services companies. The suite consists of multiple solution modules commerce manager, subscription billing engine, partner order and revenue management system, integrated global payments, advanced marketing and managed services components, and a 50,000+ strong digital affiliate network. It is a comprehensive, multichannel, multibusiness model solution. Avangate's current suite of solutions is described in the sections that follow. Avangate ecommerce Manager Avangate ecommerce Manager is a solution designed to help enable new online revenue streams across multiple touch points Web site, call center, in-app purchasing, kiosks, devices, and more. 2015 IDC #253825 4
Features of the Avangate ecommerce Manager solution include a self-service, configurable ecommerce platform; support for the complete digital product life cycle from acquisition, activations, amendments, and upsell/cross-sells to renewals; unified product and services catalog; multilanguage, customizable cart ranging from hosted pages to full API-supported custom front ends; international order and payment processing; recurring billing and subscriptions; 24 x 365 shopper support via phone, Web, and email; integration with CRM, ERP/financials, licensing and entitlement systems, and Web portals; and fully embeddable via well-defined commerce APIs. Avangate Subscription Billing Avangate Subscription Billing module enables recurring revenue for a digital business, with advanced subscription management, billing and invoicing, and multiple revenue models at every customer touch point. Features of the Avangate Subscription Billing solution include subscription pages to quickly set up and sell subscription plans; ability to bill across multiple revenue models including trials, freemiums, and perpetual, and more; support for complex plan configurations across currencies; advanced rate plans to support one-time subscription and/or usage/metered billing; flexible pricing configurations to easily adapt pricing, invoicing, discounts, and licensing models on the fly; single-click in-app purchasing simplifying customer purchases, renewals, and upgrades; and automatically generated system notices, subscription metrics and reporting (churns, conversions, cohorts, MRR/ARR), and dunning management. Avangate Channel Manager Avangate Channel Manager is a partner order and revenue management solution. It makes it easy to engage with channel partners (such as resellers and distributors) online and enable their success and maximize revenue through global reach, channel control, and visibility. Features of the Avangate Channel Manager solution include bulk ordering, license fulfillment and activation, billing, and global payments; management of tiered partner relationships, credit limits, discounts, and complex price lists; software license key management and tracking; order and invoice management; integration with ERP and CRM systems; and global visibility of channel sales. Avangate Affiliate Network Avangate Affiliate Network helps multiply digital product marketing and sales efforts by leveraging an integrated affiliate platform and rapidly growing digital goods-focused affiliate network. Features of the Avangate Affiliate Network include commissions management, dedicated portal, onboarding, performance tracking, network cross-sells, and affiliate payments management; the ability to expand and manage distribution network; 50,000+ digital affiliates including power affiliates, highly ranked download portals, and review and content sites; affiliate program management services to kickstart, optimize, and grow your affiliate sales channel; and the availability of advanced fully managed programs. 2015 IDC #253825 5
Avangate Global Payments Avangate Global Payments lets you localize the customer experience with multiple payment options, currencies, and languages in over 150 countries. Features of the Avangate Global Payments solutions include out-of-the-box support for 133 currencies, 31 languages, and 45 payment methods; intelligent payment routing that provides automatic support for and optimization between multiple payment processors around the world, improving authorization rates; account updater service that automatically updates cardholder information changes such as expired cards or closed accounts to ensure subscription continuity; and integrated payment retry logic that automates management of customer renewals and billing retries, optimized billing and rebilling schedules, and multilanguage customized ordering notifications and billing messages. Avangate Merchant Services Avangate Merchant Services provides a full set of outsourced services for tax management, level 1 call center, risk and anti-fraud services, and financial reconciliation. These include VAT and automated tax handling that automatically charges and collects sales tax and VAT (for EU) and directs funds to the appropriate tax authorities, call center services in multiple languages (English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Romanian, and Russian), a combination of heuristic scanning and manual escalation for fraud detection, foreign exchange/currency conversion across multiple processors, and PO management for easier financial reconciliation. Avangate Marketing Services Avangate Marketing Services also provides customers with top-of-the-funnel marketing services for increasing traffic and bottom-of-the-funnel services for improving conversion rates. SEO, PPC, affiliate management, and email marketing are some of the services, along with landing page and cart optimization services. Most services are delivered with a combination of in-house experts and a list of partners in their developing ecosystem. Business Strategy Go to Market and Sales Avangate goes to market through its own direct sales force based in the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Romania, Russia, Israel, and Taiwan. Avangate also added a customer success team in 2013, an appropriate move by Avangate, given its strategy to build on its customers' success. Customer success teams are a popular model for SaaS vendors, like Avangate, that work alongside of sales and technical teams but act more like a business consultant to help the customer successfully leverage the software and grow usage. The more quickly the customer starts selling, the sooner revenue share flows back to Avangate, and both parties are successful. Partnerships Currently, Avangate is focusing on two types of partnerships technology and marketing services. Technology partners help add important capability to the Avangate solution, while marketing services partners add complementary services that many customers find useful. 2015 IDC #253825 6
Avangate's technology partners are: Marketo Inc. Marketing automation platform SafeNet Inc. Entitlements and software monetization Acutrack. On-demand CD/DVD, USB, and book fulfillment SheerID. Identity and verification services to protect special offers for education and military markets Totango. Customer success and user engagement management Ve Interactive. Conversion rate optimization SaaSOptics. Cloud-based financial management system for revenue recognition Avangate's marketing services partners are: Position 2. Digital marketing services Schaaf-PartnerCentric. A full-service affiliate management agency iaffiliate Management. A full-service affiliate management agency Somebody Digital. A United Kingdom based full services agency The York Group. A multinational channel development organization serving the software industry WiderFunnel. A conversion optimization services agency In addition, Avangate provides a connector to salesforce.com and integration services to multiple financial and ERP packages. IDC believes that Avangate has selected a very good group of reliable and growing businesses with which to partner. We expect to see this list growing over time. Market Positioning The target market for Avangate is companies selling digital goods and services. This means software and SaaS companies, media and publishing, telecommunications, gaming and entertainment, Internet of things (IoT), and so on. The company is extremely focused on this space and is not being distracted by venturing into retail, branded manufacturers, and other industries selling physical goods (although some of Avangate's customers do these things as well, and Avangate's offering includes physical delivery of several backup options). Avangate's customers are typically looking for a fast path to sell online for their entire company or just a new division, to launch a new product offering, or to move into a new market. They want to add subscription services to their existing mix of offerings. They want to sell more globally and offer multiple forms of payment. As a turnkey provider of digital commerce solutions, Avangate has proven that it can deliver these services to customers and enable growth of online businesses of customers. 2015 IDC #253825 7
FUTURE OUTLOOK Challenges and Opportunities Challenges The primary challenge for Avangate is market awareness. Overall, the company is still a young one, and its largest base of customers remains in the EMEA region, although that is starting to change as the focus on marketing in North America is gaining traction. Avangate is working hard to increase its market awareness through the success of its customers, by building thought leadership programs and sponsoring events, and through its "Rethink Commerce" blog, newsletters, and other activities. Given the growth in customers and revenue, these market efforts appear to be paying off. The other challenge is the ability to scale and support a growing base of large enterprise companies. Avangate will need to continue to grow its employee base to support these customers but may also want to consider adding qualified partners. Opportunities The market opportunity for Avangate is outstanding. The total market for digital commerce applications in 2013 was $2.2 billion worldwide, growth of 25.5% over the previous year. IDC is forecasting that this market will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17.6% for the forecast period through 2018 to reach a total of $5.0 billion. In Worldwide Digital Commerce Applications 2014-2018 Forecast and 2013 Vendor Shares (IDC #251185, July 2014), IDC estimated Avangate's revenue for 2013 at $43 million, representing a growth rate of 58.1% over the previous year. IDC also estimated that Avangate was the second fastest-growing company (as per the document) and came in at number 9 on a list of 15 companies in terms of revenue. IDC believes that Avangate is well positioned to take advantage of this growing opportunity in digital commerce. In addition, as enterprise customers increasingly choose SaaS over on-premise, particularly in the CRM and enterprise resource management (ERM) areas where IDC counts Avangate's revenue, Avangate's SaaS-based digital commerce solutions are the right product for the market. In Worldwide SaaS Enterprise Applications 2014-2018 Forecast and 2013 Vendor Shares (IDC #252568, December 2014), demand for SaaS CRM solutions is forecast to grow at a 19.4% CAGR through 2018, while demand for on-premise solutions is forecast to decline by a 7.9% CAGR. Demand for SaaS enterprise resource management solutions is forecast to grow at a 17.3% CAGR through 2018, while demand for on-premise solutions is forecast to grow by 1.5% during the same period. ESSENTIAL GUIDANCE Advice for Avangate IDC advises Avangate to continue on the path it's already on: focusing squarely on providing digital commerce solutions to companies selling digital goods and services online, without being distracted by retail and other industries that also need commerce solutions. The digital goods and services market is 2015 IDC #253825 8
expanding rapidly as it seems that just about everything we want to buy is becoming available as a service. Avangate's customer expansion plans have worked well for Avangate as the company gained a very good following with start-ups and midsize enterprises before stretching up to serve the needs of large enterprises. Given the success thus far of the work Avangate has done with HP Software and others, this looks like the start of something big. The partner ecosystem can be a key component to future growth. For now, Avangate has focused on technology and marketing services partners, rather than implementation or selling partners. As Avangate moves more rapidly into the large enterprise market and expands geographically, the company may want to review its partnering strategy and add a few select partners to help the company scale. Adding these partners will require training and certification programs to ensure that the partners are qualified to properly serve Avangate's growing customer base. Advice for Buyers Software, SaaS, and services companies that want to get started selling online and moving into new markets should absolutely have Avangate on their list of vendors to consider. The revenue share model for licensing is a cost-effective way to get started, but if over time it seems more expensive than a traditional license, remember that payment processing, merchant account fees, and other services are included. These are services that need to be paid for anyway, so be sure to take that into consideration. Avangate products have proven to be a solid digital commerce platform for a growing number of customers since 2006. Prospective customers are advised to check references and talk with Avangate's existing customers for their perspective. In addition, all prospective customers are advised to look closely at the current capabilities of Avangate's solutions as well as the road map for the next two to three releases to ensure that what will be delivered will meet the organization's business requirements. IDC also encourages prospective customers to engage with Avangate's responsive sales and customer success teams to ensure they are providers you will trust and enjoy working with for a long time to come. LEARN MORE Related Research Worldwide SaaS Enterprise Applications 2014-2018 Forecast and 2013 Vendor Shares (IDC #252568, December 2014) Worldwide Digital Commerce Applications 2014-2018 Forecast and 2013 Vendor Shares (IDC #251185, September 2014) IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Digital Commerce Applications 2014 Vendor Assessment (IDC #249597, June 2014) Worldwide Digital Commerce Applications 2013-2017 Forecast and 2012 Vendor Shares (IDC #245069, December 2013) 2015 IDC #253825 9
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