Introduction
Ever wondered how JCPenney
managed to migrate their old Base24 system to their new modern robust and streamlined
OmniPayments payment gateway solution? OmniPayments
wasn’t their original first choice; other major names were higher on the list,
but for one reason or another, struggled to rise to the challenge.
This article describes how
JCPenney achieved this successful migration; and in a matter of months. It describes the steps
they took to make their choice, and why they eventually settled on OmniPayments. They now feel their new solution is superior
in many ways to the old one. The new
solution provides a much improved and flexible solution that can process their
payments transactions much faster, with higher volume at a much lower cost. The
new solution enables business monitoring capabilities, and an infrastructure
perspective that was not available to JCPenney with the previous solution.
JCPenney is extremely satisfied with the product architecture, performance and support as evidenced by the following quote:
JCPenney is extremely satisfied with the product architecture, performance and support as evidenced by the following quote:
The Trigger
In the spring of 2016, the vendor of the legacy Payments
solution at JCPenney, ACI, informed JCPenney that the existing old version of
their Base24 product will no longer be supported as of March 2018. In order to
move to a newer version, JCPenney would need to upgrade both the software as
well as the hardware.
This requirement essentially imposed not only a major, and in
some way risky platform change, but also required a significant rewrite of the
environment.
Due to the foreseeable effort to do the rewrite, JCPenney
decided to “open up the field” to other providers. Thus, initiating a new
evaluation process that included several other solution providers.
Vendor Selection
The selection process looked at eight providers. One of the
most critical criteria for JCPenney was risk. Historically, JCPenney is very
risk averse and that was key to their selection process. This heritage of
avoiding or minimizing risk as much as possible, caused JCPenney to focus only
on large established providers.
Thus, OmniPayments was eliminated during the first round of
selection because it was viewed as being too small and therefore risky.
In the first round of selections the number of providers was
reduced to three and then two. However, none of these providers could meet the
deadline to have the new solution in place prior to the end of support life of
the existing solution, that being March 2018, as previously stated.
Once it became evident that the remainder of the selected
suppliers could not meet the deadline, JCPenney decided to reopen the evaluation
to a larger set of providers, which now again included OmniPayments.
Throughout the entire selection period, the technical team
kept pushing the management team to evaluate OmniPayments and their solution.
It was in large part this tenacity of the technical team that resulted in
JCPenney not only taking another look at OmniPayments, but ultimately selecting
it as the go forward payments provider.
Once the decision was made to evaluate OmniPayments, the
overall superiority of the solution became evident.
• The ability to meet the target date
• Much better value-proposition
• Flexibility of the product to plug into existing technology and infrastructure
• Significantly improved support and maintenance
• Product capabilities, especially the ability to monitor both business and infrastructure metrics and performance
• The level of partnership throughout the entire process
• The ability to meet the target date
• Much better value-proposition
• Flexibility of the product to plug into existing technology and infrastructure
• Significantly improved support and maintenance
• Product capabilities, especially the ability to monitor both business and infrastructure metrics and performance
• The level of partnership throughout the entire process
One of the key benefits of the new solution to
JCPenney is the Analytics Dashboard. With the previous solution, it was not
possible to know If there was an issue with process certain types of
transactions or what if anything might be impacting the ability to process
transactions, whether caused by performance or some failure. If some issue
arose, JCPenney had to wait until the next day to analyze data, essentially
having a 24-hour delay in determining if anything was wrong. Furthermore, it
was often necessary for the business to contact the IT support team to ask them
to investigate if any infrastructure issues, such as network related failures,
or the like had been encountered that could have caused issues with transaction
processing.
With OmniPayments, the dashboard provides real-time information on both the business transactions as well as the performance and general health of the system from an infrastructure perspective.
"We are also seeing much faster transaction processing with the OmniPayments solutions," per Melissa Pint. "We are both processing at a higher transaction rate and transactions are being processed much faster."
With OmniPayments, the dashboard provides real-time information on both the business transactions as well as the performance and general health of the system from an infrastructure perspective.
"We are also seeing much faster transaction processing with the OmniPayments solutions," per Melissa Pint. "We are both processing at a higher transaction rate and transactions are being processed much faster."
"In the event some issue does come up, the support team is
always available to assist. They are simply outstanding, from the on-site team
all the way up to the CEO."
With the previous solution JCPenney often found themselves having to develop the actual fix following multiple meetings and discussions. This made the maintenance with the previous solution just that much more costly.
With the OmniPayments solution, JCPenney has realized significant savings both in terms of product and support costs.
With the previous solution JCPenney often found themselves having to develop the actual fix following multiple meetings and discussions. This made the maintenance with the previous solution just that much more costly.
With the OmniPayments solution, JCPenney has realized significant savings both in terms of product and support costs.
In the event some issue does come up, the support team is
always available to assist. They are simply outstanding, from the on-site team
all the way up to the CEO."
With the previous solution JCPenney often found themselves having to develop the actual fix following multiple meetings and discussions. This made the maintenance with the previous solution just that much more costly.
With the OmniPayments solution, JCPenney has realized significant savings both in terms of product and support costs…
With the previous solution JCPenney often found themselves having to develop the actual fix following multiple meetings and discussions. This made the maintenance with the previous solution just that much more costly.
With the OmniPayments solution, JCPenney has realized significant savings both in terms of product and support costs…
Migration
In the spring of 2017, prior to the actual contract being
signed, OmniPayments in a show of good faith embarked on a pilot to demonstrate
the capability of the OmniPayments solution. The contract was signed in July of
2017. The pilot was then leveraged for the first of the phased migration to
implement the PIN Credit solution that went live in September of 2017.
Two months after the contract was signed, and in less than
six months after the initiation of the pilot, JCPenney had moved the first of
the piece-meal migration component into production. The entire migration was
completed in the March/April 2018 timeframe.
Thus, the entire process took between 12 – 14 months, which
as stated by Melissa Pint, JCPenney considers lightening fast, and previously
unheard of in JCPenney history.
Conclusion
JCPenney is extremely satisfied with their new OmniPayments
solution. The new Solution and migration met the deadline requirements that
none of the other providers could meet, and did so with a much richer set of
features at a much lower cost. JCPenney has insight to both the business and
the infrastructure that they never had in the past, which provides them with
valuable advantages over the previous solution.
With thanks
This article is based on the recent Connection Magazine article penned by Peter Schvarcz - NonStop Technology Consultant, OmniPayments. The original can be found at https://pubthis.com/theconnection
Comments
Post a Comment