Announcing Our New Product Lineup

Today we announced a revamped product lineup that packages our solution into four different Editions. The press release describes the new Editions, and there is much more detail on our Web site behind our registration form.

The reason for the change was simple. Previously, we offered a single solution with a long menu of choices, which put the burden on our customers to select the features they desired. Over the course of several years and more than 200 implementations, we found that our customers were falling naturally into several buckets, with large or complex financial institutions having a very different set of needs than smaller institutions or ones who just wanted to get up and running quickly. And we only had one implementation process and technology platform to serve both of these distinct groups, which means the smaller or less complex ones were put through a longer and more involved process than probably was needed, which came through loud and clear in many of our post-launch satisfaction surveys.

So we have now bucketed our solution into four Editions to meet the widely varying functionality and price points we have observed in the market. To give you an idea, our new Community Edition is an entirely new offering that can be up and running in a matter of weeks. Compared to competitive solutions, Community Edition still has a robust feature set, but we have limited many of the configuration choices to what we consider best practices based on our experience. In the middle we have our Premium and Premium+ Editions, with the primary difference between them being that Premium+ Edition includes robust integration to leading core and Internet banking systems, while Premium Edition is a non-integrated solution. These two mid-range solutions represent a great compromise between configurability, cost, and time to market, again based on our experience and industry best practices. Finally, Enterprise Edition represents a robust offering with all of our available functionality, integration, and configurability.

We have also updated our pricing model to line up with these Editions, in response to feedback we were hearing from the market:

• The first change we made was to define fixed setup fees for each of these Editions, rather than a wide range of setup fee possibilities based on configuration choices made during the contract process. Setup fees increase with each subsequent Edition, but have been reduced across the board (even in the new Enterprise Edition, the new setup fee is significantly lower than a comparable configuration under our old pricing model). And the fixed nature of the setup fees means that once you're in an Edition, you can add any features supported for that Edition at no additional cost.
• The second change we made was to tier our transaction fees based on Edition, with the higher Editions involving higher transaction fees. Previously, we had one set of transaction fees regardless of the functionality involved.
• The net result on pricing is that customers with basic needs now have a low cost solution not previously available, while customers with more complex needs will end up paying more over time, but only in proportion to the value delivered, and all should save money in the short run.

Finally, we have had some questions from existing customers regarding what impact this change may have on them. You will be getting a communication from us on this subject, but the short answer is that these Editions represent a bundling of functionality that is already available to you for purchase or via the standard upgrade cycle, so you're not missing anything functionally. We have done this primarily to streamline the sales and implementation process for new customers going forward based in large part on your feedback. Your existing pricing is locked in throughout the term of your contract, and you will only see the new pricing model when your contract next comes up for renewal.

Take a look at the info on our Web site, especially the more detailed info behind our registration form, and let me know your thoughts. I'd love to hear your feedback, good or bad. If you're on Twitter you can reach me at @CharlieKroll, or else my email address is ckroll@andera.com.