Nexstra’s nCommerce services blend consulting expertise and software tools to deliver a complete product fulfillment solution. Most technology companies are moving to a hybrid product fulfillment solution where electronic software delivery is the primary delivery mechanism. Transitioning to a hybrid product fulfillment solution can be challenging. Nexstra has significant experience assisting companies with making this transition.
Nexstra’s nCommerce system provides a comprehensive, outsourced, “on demand” physical fulfillment service for enterprise software companies. Nexstra is partnered with Flexera to assist its customers to realize significant cost savings, comply with government regulations, and to continue to provide superior service to its end-customers, channel partners and employees. Nexstra’s nCommerce system is tightly integrated with Flexera’s FlexNet products. This integration allows Flexera’s customers to leverage their investment to achieve business goals.
Most software companies are moving to a model of delivering software electronically using solutions such as Flexera’s FLEXnet Suite. Investing in a solution such as FLEXnet and at the same time maintaining a traditional production capability is very expensive and inefficient. Ideally, software companies should adopt a hybrid fulfillment model where the primary delivery method is electronic, augmented with a low cost physical delivery capability. In addition to cost issues associated with retaining a traditional fulfillment solution, there are legal risks with providing digital delivery and at the same time continuing to provide physical delivery. Software companies can trigger a sales tax liability on digitally delivered goods if they subsequently deliver tangible products to their customer. The only solution is outsourcing production coupled with having customers purchase tangible goods from a third party.
Key Service Features
- Integrates with your systems (e.g. order management, license management, HRMS, software repository)
- Full support for the unique requirements of your customers, channel partners and employees
- Custom online stores for your customers, channel partners and employees
- License entitlements can control access to purchase any item in the online stores
- Online stores can sell license controlled product
- Sale of new products or maintenance renewals can be pushed into your system(s)
- Product catalog and software repository can be used to directly drive the creation of media
- Manages all physical fulfillment details, from order submission through to production and delivery confirmation
- Integrates with existing fulfillment vendors’ systems
- Nexstra production is truly “on demand” – order quantities can be as small as one.
Key Service Benefits
- Dramatically reduces cost of goods sold
- Assures only licensed customers, partners and employees are able to purchase license controlled products
- Enables a transition to a hybrid fulfillment model where the expense for tangible goods can be transitioned to end-customers and channel partners.
- Provides compliance with federal and state sales tax regulations concerning the treatment of tangible delivery of products after a customer has received sales tax free delivery via electronic delivery.
- Improves customer satisfaction and retention by providing up-to-date manuals and media for all products.
Customer Support
Nexstra provides complete customer services to you and your customers. Standard support is provided 8am to 7pm PST. Additional support is available until 12midnight on all period end dates (e.g. month-end, quarter-end, year-end).
Payment Terms
For your end-customers and partners, flexible payment options are available. Standard payment methods such as invoicing with terms, checks, wire transfers, and all major credit card are available. For your channel partners, other special arrangments can be made. The nCommerce system supports the generation of quotes that can later be converted to invoices.
Channel Partner Support
ISVs need to be sensitive to the needs of channel partners. Nexstra’s nCommerce system provides broad support for channel partners. This support includes:
- Discounted pricing
- Payment by invoice with credit terms
- Payment in foreign currencies
- Flexibility with international shipping terms (e.g. incoterms)
If you are a Flexera customer, then the nCommerce system can automatically detect resellers by their account type.
Employee Support
Many companies allow their employees to purchase manuals, media and training items. Often, different departments need to purchase goods on a regular basis – for example, sales operations and training departments. Nexstra’s nCommerce system provides a variety of support capabilities for managing purchases by departments and employees. Some of the features include:
- Employee login accounts with numerous attributes
– Manager authorization required
– Individual order spending limit / overall budget limit
– Access control to license controlled products
– List of purchase orders that can be billed against
- Authorization workflow to control purchases
- Charging against one or more purchase orders
- Custom online reports summarizing purchasing activity by items such as employee, department, purchase order
- Integration with HRMS systems for obtaining and managing employee accounts
Sales Operations Support
Most companies still need to ship tangible product to their customers. Typically, these orders will flow through the company’s main order management system and into Nexstra's nCommerce system. Some might need to be manually entered via an online store. Nexstra’s nCommerce system provides wide ranging support for the internal operations team tasked with managing fulfillment . A key part to managing the fulfillment process is provided by Nexstra's "Partner" web portal. Some of the capabilities of this portal are:
- View order details
- Edit shipping address
- Edit shipping method and terms
- Release / cancel held orders
- Order "chat" functionality to record communications between company and vendor
- Run reports
- View use of discount codes
- Edit various attributes of product catalog items