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CoverStory

"What's really nice about owning our own processing platform is we are able to By the time Apple Pay debuted in
bring value to our distribution partners, our end users (mainly the merchants), 2014, Cayan's platform had evolved.
based on what's most important to our organization," Gardner said. "We The Genius endeavor required build-
control our own product and technology roadmap, which is very important to ing a team to build the product. Its
our corporate growth." staff of technologists grew from 15 to
nearly 150, with software engineers
To keep up with demand, NAB expanded its technology team, which today in both Boston and Belfast, Ireland,
has more than 100 people managing select projects. "There are a lot of good where much of the day-to-day coding
ideas that you might not be able to monetize in the near term, and creating and gets done today. Architects and engi-
adding value related to the ability to monetize those products in the near term neers have joined remotely, and the
is very critical," said Gardner, who stressed the importance of prioritizing ideas company's Phoenix team is dedicated
from an income opportunity approach. to building out its gift and loyalty
platform.
For NAB, the vetting process often begins by asking what touch points will
be served. "Are they franchisee or franchisor locations, because if they're To unify teams and maintain dead-
franchisor, they control their integration path as well as their upgrade path," lines, Cayan employs a special unit
he said. "In many cases, when they come to us we are able to take a much more that interfaces between its partners
thoughtful and constructive approach." and the integration and engineering
teams to ensure that projects flow
Henry Helgeson, co-founder and CEO of Cayan LLC, told The Green Sheet that smoothly. As such, partners are cho-
the company's cloud-based Genius platform, which launched in 2012, was built sen carefully. "You have to be very
on the concept of future-proofing merchant systems by offering the ability to thoughtful and deliberate what part-
aggregate and integrate every conceivable transaction technology, payment ners you're going to bring into the
type and customer engagement program that enters the pipeline. fold and what you're going to leave in
your roadmap and get done another
time," Helgeson said.

Beyond evaluating the product, fund-
ing and viability of potential part-
ners, other factors carry weight. "If
you went to Money20/20 three years
ago, a lot of those startups are no lon-
ger around, so there is risk in doing
business with a company," Helgeson
said. He recommends taking a close
look at the management team to de-
termine whether it's a good fit cultur-
ally, since doing so will increase the
probability of accomplishing shared
goals.

Helgeson noted that with indepen-
dent software vendor (ISV) and POS
developer partners, it may be tempt-
ing to allow as many of them to in-
tegrate as possible, but with only
24 hours in the day, it is best to pick
partners strategically and spend en-
ergy focusing on Tier 1 prospects.
Once the integration is done, the real
work begins. Sales, marketing and
support must then align on the mes-
sage to board and manage merchants
effectively.

To illustrate the importance of evalu-
ating technology from the merchant's
standpoint, Helgeson described a

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