Product: Product Information Management System (PIMS)
Company: Company: Broadband Central Inc.
For many ISOs, new POS security requirements offer a lucrative selling opportunity that depends on a tedious chore.
As the July 1, 2010, deadline approaches for mandatory Payment Application Data Security Standard-compliance, countless merchants may require new processors - a potential windfall for enterprising ISOs. But vendors eager to capitalize on this face the daunting challenge of distinguishing merchants who are in compliance from those who are not.
Broadband Central Inc., an information technology asset management company, is marketing to ISOs a hosted software service to facilitate that process.
Product Information Management System (PIMS) - on the market several years but only recently applied to the payments arena - can track a product by accessing all pertinent data along its functioning lifetime, allowing suppliers to ascertain where sold merchandise currently resides. For ISOs, that means tracking a sold POS device beyond its point of sale.
"The majority of [POS] devices out in the field, especially in the United States, are noncompliant, so somebody has to work on identifying those devices and then start work on getting them swapped out," said David Matusow, Vice President, Technology for Broadband Central. "You're talking a massive turnover that could occur in the industry that people have not been able to service at all."
Matusow said PIMS has the unique capacity to compile product information (including warranties) in a "multi-enterprised environment" or across the various domains through which a given product passes - from the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) to the ISO to the merchant, for example. The technology culls information from a variety of databases, including shipment data and terminal management systems.
"There are a number of vendors that will do various types of asset management, but typically that's an intracompany asset management plan," Matusow said. "At the point that an ISO ships off the terminal, that's no longer within their ownership, so it's no longer seen as one of their assets.
"We've been utilizing [PIMS] in various industries - the cell phone industry, for example - to try to start tracking in a multi-enterprised environment. Because you have OEMs that are building the devices, you've got cell phone companies deploying these devices out and you've got middlemen also, so we developed a tool that ... allows each level tier to see the devices that are applicable to them."
ISOs using PIMS to locate payment processors still need to determine whether products are compliant - although Matusow said that part is fairly easy. "You can go through and say, well, if it's such and such a model, we know that is a noncompliant device," he said. "In most cases it doesn't take rocket science to recognize that x or y is a noncompliant device."
Matusow added that ISOs who use PIMS also have a broader sales opportunity.
"A lot of those devices are single application only, so typically those would be financial transactions," he said. "What happens when the ISO and merchant want to go and offer loyalty cards or gift cards or to do a check capture? These devices aren't compliant - they can't support that - so it is a multifaceted sales environment the ISO can work on."
For more information on PIMS, contact David Matusow at dmatusow@bbcentral.net or at the phone number included in this article.
Broadband Central Inc.
623-337-3261
www.bbcentral.net
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