Host Analytics is taking advantage of one of the inherent advantages that vendors of software as a service (SaaS) have compared to on-premises ones: It’s easier for them to offer their customers data services and shared data repositories. The company’s Decision Hub has been available since last summer. Although it doesn’t break new ground, it is a solid offering of this type and its value should be considered in any evaluation of Host’s offering.

I expect that most business-oriented SaaS ultimately will have to provide users with a common data repository for information that they need to access in the course of using the software. This information may be from third-party sources as well as within the application. In Host Analytics’ case, it is offering easy access to data from the United States Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC’s) EDGAR database which contains information on 12,000 companies that can be used to benchmark a company’s performance (albeit at a very high level), and the performance of competitors, suppliers and customers. Decision Hub has leading indicators available for companies to track in planning and anticipating potential changes in the economy or specific markets. And there is a set of foreign exchange rates for translating subsidiaries’ results. more

In Congressional testimony he delivered in September, Postmaster General and chief executive officer Patrick Donahoe said that the U.S. Postal Service was forecasting a net loss of up to $10 billion for the fiscal year, which ended September 30. On top of that, the Service likely would reach its statutory borrowing limit of $15 billion by September 30, as well.

To remedy this, the USPS is proposing a range of solutions, ranging from a move to five-day delivery, to the consolidation of post offices. Some, such a proposal to allow the Postal Service to determine the frequency of mail delivery, require Congressional action. Others, such as enlarging the geographic areas supported by each processing plant, don’t require legislative approval, says Lex Litton, senior vice president of operations with consultancy, Phoenix Hecht. As a result, they’re likely to move forward.

A brief on the Phoenix Hecht website outlines the changes being proposed and the probable impact to remittance mail. For starters, the USPS likely will reduce its network of processing facilities from about 460 to roughly 200. In addition, because the overnight delivery of first class mail means that sortation equipment is used inefficiently, the USPS will propose new first class service standards that eliminate the overnight delivery category and reduce two-day delivery somewhat, Phoenix Hecht predicts. more

The financial services industry is a huge user of information technology, but it has been much slower to jump on the cloud bandwagon. Most of its cloud interest, rather, has revolved around virtualization and private clouds. wiredFINANCE addressed private clouds some months back here.

At a recent gathering of financial services executives in Boston the topic turned to cloud computing. Information Week reporter Charles Babcock was there and captured the mood of the gathering, pulling what he considered five cloud lessons, the problematic word here is lesson.

Kevin Jackson, writing for Forbes, focused on eight cloud mistakes here. Check out what the financial industry folks advise about cloud computing here. more

Banks and other businesses that work with payment cards and third-party network transactions just received a bit of a breather. In Notice 2011-88, the IRS postponed for one year the effective date for potential backup withholding obligations for payments made in settlement of payment card and third party network transactions, or section 6050W payments. The initial regulations required that backup withholding apply to section 6050W payments made after December 31, 2011, if a payee hadn’t provided a correct taxpayer identification number (TIN) to a section 6050W payor. This notice pushes the requirements out one year, so they apply to 6050W payments made after December 31, 2012.

An FAQ posted on the IRS website provides a bit of background on the requirements. Section 6050W was part of the Housing Assistance Tax Act of 2008, and required some payors to provide information returns covering payments made to settle merchant card and third-party payment network transactions. “Third-party information reporting has been shown to increase voluntary tax compliance, improve collections and assessments within IRS, and thereby reduce the tax gap,” the FAQ said, in explaining the new requirement. more

As its name suggests, demand-based pricing is a method that uses the buyer’s demand, based on an estimate of a good’s or service’s perceived value to the buyer, as the central element in setting price. Pricing strategies are most important because they can have a disproportionate impact (positive and negative) on a company’s bottom line. Managing prices has always been an activity of keen interest, but it has become even more so over the past decade as a result of the constrained pricing environment.

Price and revenue optimization (PRO) is a business discipline used to effect demand-based pricing; it applies market segmentation techniques to achieve strategic objectives such as increased profitability or higher market share. PRO first came into wide use in the airline and hospitality industries in the 1980s as a way of maximizing returns from less flexible travelers (such as people on business trips) while minimizing the unsold inventory by selling incremental seats on flights or hotel room nights at discounted prices to more discretionary buyers (typically vacationers). Today, it is a well-developed part of any business strategy in the travel industry and increasingly used in others. more