Avangate, the agile eCommerce service provider trusted by thousands of software and SaaS companies to grow their businesses worldwide through any channel and any model, today announced the 2012 Fall Release of powerful new customer-centric tools within its SkyCommerce Suite. Avangate has enhanced its features with intuitive controls to unlock deeper customer insights and streamline customer and subscription management. These advancements provide businesses with an integrated and agile commerce platform to service and retain customers at every touchpoint.

"Software companies are quickly adapting their businesses to subscription models, even as they increasingly build and deliver new services via the cloud. This shift to where the customers have the ability to drop their subscriptions at any time forces publishers to better understand and service them," said Michael Ni, CMO, Avangate. "Our Fall Release focuses upon exactly that - giving software and SaaS vendors ‘the big picture view’ of their customers and subscriptions, and more importantly the right tools to service and retain those customers. Along with deep SaaS and subscription business support, the Fall Release continues to build the commerce capabilities that all our clients, from small businesses to Fortune 500 companies, need to accelerate their global sales, as they adapt their systems to the growing customer expectations for service and pay-as-you-go pricing."

Avangate’s 2012 Fall Release contains over a hundred new features and enhancements, including:

• Enhanced Self-Service: With every interaction potentially a “moment of need,” the Fall Release enables vendors to offer more granular self-service capabilities to review, manage and update subscriptions and user accounts across touch-points. These features include a fully brandable online “myAccount” set of pages through to embedded self-service capabilities that can be deployed within a vendor’s application.
• Assisted Service Console: Beyond self-service, Avangate has greatly expanded account representatives tools to directly manage subscriptions and user account information on behalf of a customer - all while securely managing customer private and payment information. Support representatives can, in real-time, apply upgrades and discounts to subscriptions, create new and update existing orders, and manage billing details.
• Expanded Email / Notifications: Vendors now have enhanced visibility into their customer behavior across response, conversion rates, and other email marketing metrics. Coupled with rich, customizable email templates, this allows for better management of the entire sales and retention customer lifecycle based on individual customer value and behavior.
• Unified Customer Views and Processes: Avangate vendors have added visibility and control to manage their software businesses, whether they are a SaaS / Cloud Service provider, an on-premise solution, or a hybrid of both. Customer 360-degree views and updated customer and subscription management flows consolidate information and streamline subscription management, order entry and fulfillment, and billing management.
• Expanded Touchpoints: With customers increasingly learning about and purchasing products on their channel of choice, Avangate’s enriched APIs and expanded mobile ordering capabilities enables vendors’ customers to order where, when, and how they want. Designed to embed commerce at any touchpoint, Avangate provides commerce capabilities within mobile apps, native apps and custom sales processes.

The new Avangate 2012 Fall Release features are available today for Avangate eCommerce and SkyCommerce customers. For more information, please visit the Avangate site.

Avangate received the Deloitte Fast50 award for fastest growing companies and was named a Red Herring “Top 100 Europe” technology company in 2012. Its SkyCommerce platform was recognized by the Software & Information Industry Association, CODiE Awards as one of the “Best Electronic Commerce Solutions”. To learn more about how Avangate can grow your software sales, visit our interactive tour and follow our blog for tips on marketing, channel management, eCommerce and the business of software.

About Avangate

Avangate is an advanced eCommerce provider that enables Software and Software-as-a-Service companies to sell their products via any channel and any model with a view to optimizing both online and offline revenue. Specifically designed for the software vertical, Avangate’s scalable solution includes a full-featured secure eCommerce platform, a partner management system as well as a worldwide affiliate network. Avangate's expertise in the software business helps vendors increase product visibility on the Internet, maximize access to additional selling channels and improve overall software revenue.

More information can be found on avangate.com