Pitney Bowes & GE Tie-Up Launches Clarity Solutions Suite

Pitney Bowes Inc. (NYSE:PBI) recently declared that it will showcase the latest intelligent mailing software- Clarity Solutions Suite- a product co-developed with industrial good manufacturing behemoth General Electric Company (NYSE:GE) . Powered by General Electric’s Predix platform, this is the first commercial offering ever since both companies entered into collaboration. Clarity Solutions, which harnesses the power of Industrial Internet to revolutionize production mail industry, will be showcased in Germany’s renowned trade fair drupa2016 in Dusseldorf.

Clarity Solutions Suite has already been deployed by enterprise services and infrastructure management provider Highmark Health’s subsidiary HM Health Solutions (HMHS). This latest offering from the Pitney Bowes family, runs on state-of-the-art industrial internet technology to analyze data collected from sensors on production mail machines. Clarity Solutions suite offers sophisticated predictive analytics platform and prescriptive maintenance that will help clients in obtaining real-time insights, thus helping them to improve performance.

A long-term customer of Pitney Bowes, HMHS has successfully deployed offerings like production “mail inserting solutions” and “presort services” that has greatly simplified their operations by analyzing 125 million packages. The company believes early detection and preventive healthcare care are cornerstones for efficient functioning of the healthcare industry. Thanks to Pitney Bowes’ Clarity Solutions, that will help monitor trends to detect machine issues beforehand, runtime capacity will get a boost and the risk of downtime will be minimized.

Pitney Bowes’ latest offering comes on the back of the previously launched revolutionary Commerce Cloud platform which it believes, will act as the foundation for all future products and solutions. Commerce Cloud, along with several SaaS-based products and solutions, was introduced during first-quarter 2016 and is expected to bolster digital capabilities and web-based solutions.

We note Clarity Solutions is the second major offering after the location intelligence solution that was introduced last month. We believe the product launch inertia of the company, which has always been its key strength, is reinvigorated with the launch of Commerce Cloud platform and will strongly supplement the top-line performance of the company.

Despite potential product launches, incremental marketing expenses related to new advertising campaign is posing as a major challenge for Pitney Bowes. Also, deteriorating market conditions in the technology industry is hurting the company’s software business materially, which in turn is thwarting current growth. Currency headwinds also continue to pose a major threat for the Zacks Rank #4 (Sell) company’s financial performance in the coming quarters.

Some better ranked stocks in the industry include PFSweb Inc. (NASDAQ:PFSW) and PRGX Global, Inc. (NASDAQ:PRGX) . Both companies sport a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy).