Innovating in Payment Technology: Plimus CEO Hagai Tal (Part 4)

Sramana: So, you’re saying that Plimus occupies a unique segment of the e-commerce payments platforms by focusing on subscription or intellectual property transactions?

Hagai Tal: There are a lot of other players, but they all offer only a portion of what we do. Companies like Vindicia do subscription management, but they do not touch the money. They don’t prevent fraud or do any invoicing. We also offer a marketing tools like coupons and email management for people who have bought something from the platform.

Sramana: Are you overlapping with Salesforce.com in some areas?

Hagai Tal: Not necessarily, although it is the same solution. You can use them, but you would still need someone to help you touch the money.

Sramana: When you took over this company in 2008, what were some of your first strategic moves?

Hagai Tal: We had to make some changes in each division. In technology we installed a QA team, we invested in a fully redundant architecture, and did all of the things necessary to be able to scale the company. From the finance perspective we hired a CFO and went through big five audits. We organized ourselves to handle all the various sales taxes. From a customer service perspective, we hired a head of customer service and had them instill methodologies throughout the company. They taught people how to answer the phone, how to talk to clients, and how to deal with fraud.

From a payments perspective we renegotiated all of our deals with all of our processors. We added new processors in new locations. We added current conversion tools on top of the platform. We also went from one merchant account to seven. We created a marketing division and hired a lot of people into that division. We hired more salespeople.

Sramana: What are some of your milestones between 2008 and 2011?

Hagai Tal: When we started to get larger clients, we felt that was a big moment. We felt it was a success when Autodesk joined the platform, and again when MyHeritage joined the platform. When we started in 2008, our largest client was around $400,000 a month in transactions. Once we started getting clients that did over a $1 million a month in transactions, we found that they brought different demands. We were able to deliver on those demands so we felt we were on top of something big. Those demands were all in the areas of subscriptions. Today 40% of their business with us involves recurring billing services. That creates good value for Plimus.

Sramana: Why did Autodesk choose Plimus over any other company?

Hagai Tal: The main store at Autodesk is a black box that has a solution. When they bought five different companies they needed a new, complex solution delivered in three weeks time. They had different prices and licenses for each company in Europe, and they approached us because they knew we could do it faster and that our solution was much more flexible.

One of the companies they acquired was one of our clients. They saw what we were capable of doing so they turned to us to provide their flexible solution. They still use DigitalRiver on the primary store, but they use us for all of the other integrated solutions.

This segment is part 4 in the series : Innovating in Payment Technology: Plimus CEO Hagai Tal
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