What It Means To Be Vendor Agnostic

With how competitive digital marketplaces are today, businesses are seeking ways to differentiate and streamline their operations. One method that has recently gained popularity is becoming vendor agnostic, especially in payment stacks. But what does this term mean, and how does payment routing play a part in realizing this strategy?

What Does Vendor Agnostic Mean?

Being vendor agnostic refers to the practice of designing systems, especially in payments and IT, that are not dependent on a single product, vendor, or platform. Instead of being tied to one specific software or solution, businesses that adopt a vendor-agnostic approach get the redundancy and flexibility of selecting from a wider range of products and services. This approach is rooted in the idea of not being bound by limitations or limiting risk of a particular vendor, ensuring that the business’s needs and best interests always come first.

Product Agnostic Meaning and What Being Agnostic in Software Entails

“Product agnostic” simply means you are not limited to any one specific software solution.

Aligning your business with just one product suite can become problematic should any technical issues arise on the provider’s end. Tying your operations to a single solution can also harm your ability to reach new customers if that product is not suited to the needs of customers in a certain region. 

The product agnostic approach gives you the flexibility to choose from a variety of services that best suit your needs at any given time. You can adapt to changing market conditions and adjust your own products and services accordingly without disrupting your cash flow or your customer experience. 

Looking at financial technologies specifically, an agnostic payment gateway solution can enable intelligent routing of transactions across multiple gateways based on variables like location, transaction value, payment method, or even your own technological preferences as a merchant. With this type of solution, you can not only improve your overall transaction success rates but also increase your company’s resilience under the pressures of gateway outages or underperformance.  

When we speak of being agnostic in software, we’re referring to a broader philosophy that promotes adaptability in your payment system. Rather than building your entire tech stack around one vendor’s ecosystem of services and solutions, an agnostic approach to software encourages integration with a much vaster range of tools and APIs, reducing your long-term risk of vendor lock-in (more on that later).

One misconception we sometimes see from merchants and marketplaces is that an agnostic approach can result in a lack of a committed IT strategy due to maintaining multiple relationships with different providers. In reality, embracing product agnosticism places greater emphasis on interoperability and business scalability, helping you to create a more substantial competitive advantage.

Merchants and marketplaces that adopt an agnostic approach can respond more quickly to things like regulatory shifts or changing customer preferences, making your business less likely to face constraints from the capabilities of a single vendor.  

Is Platform Agnostic the Same as Vendor Agnostic?

While they share similarities in promoting flexibility and adaptability, platform agnostic and vendor agnostic are not the same. Platform agnostic describes the capacity of software or applications to function seamlessly across different systems, platforms, or environments. A basic example is software that works on multiple operating systems like Windows, MacOS, or Linux without the need for extensive modifications. On the other hand, being vendor agnostic implies that a business doesn’t tie itself to a specific product, vendor, or solution but maintains the freedom to choose amongst various options, ensuring optimal solutions based on evolving needs.

Are you looking for flexibility in your payments stack? Spreedly can show you the benefits of a vendor-agnostic approach today!

Platform Agnostic vs. Vendor Agnostic vs. Provider Agnostic

Along with remaining untied to a specific platform and vendor, you can also be provider agnostic. 

In a sense, the terms vendor and provider can hold the same meaning. 

We can define vendors as those who offer out-of-the-box products or solutions for sale with minimal additional support. Providers on the other hand typically offer more comprehensive and ongoing services that include continuous support for tasks like integration and customization. 

A long-term relationship with a provider can ensure you have access to the latest upgrades or innovations delivered reliably and on a consistent schedule rather than as a one-time. 

The advantages of this stem from the interplay of platforms and providers.

A platform agnostic solution grants access to multiple operating systems and software frameworks, giving you a wider range of environments and tools to build upon. For example, a solution that integrates seamlessly with both PayPal and Stripe could be considered platform agnostic, offering you the benefit of flexibility and allowing you to become better-equipped to meet the exact needs of your customers based on their spending behaviors and preferences. 

Yet, if you are not provider agnostic, you may find yourself limited to just the features of that provider’s platform despite your desire to follow a more diverse approach. 

A truly agnostic platform must give you the freedom to choose between and integrate different providers, even if those providers offer similar services and solutions. 

With this ability, you can build a custom ecosystem that is equal parts scalable and resilient, allowing you to flow with the changing tides of whatever industry or sector in which you operate. You can also avoid becoming overly reliant on any one vendor, such as those that offer cloud computing services. Doing so enables you to create a payment system with multiple points of backup should any one vendor, platform, or provider experience an outage or outright failure. 

Embracing the agnostic approach across all three categories of platforms, vendors, and providers is essential. While it may seem overwhelming in the short-term, it can give you the options and adaptability you need to tackle the digital uncertainties of high-speed payment and business growth. 

The Benefits Of Being Vendor Agnostic

Vendor agnosticism isn’t limited to just payments. Its benefits span across industries and business operations. Here’s why companies are turning towards this approach.

Flexibility

Businesses aren’t tied down to a single solution or vendor, allowing for agile adaptability to changing needs or new innovations. Often organizations must be able to quickly pivot payment processes to meet business demands. Still others need to be able to continuously test new payment solutions or payment methods in markets to see what works best for their customers and improve topline revenue. The ability to more quickly address these needs without overhauling an entire payments stack is critical. 

Optimization and Savings

By not being locked into a single vendor, businesses can pivot based on cost-effectiveness and performance, ensuring always getting the best bang for their buck. For instance, an e-commerce store might switch payment providers if another offers lower transaction fees. Saving one percent on transaction fees may seem like a small amount but it adds up if you’re doing a high volume of transactions.

Risk Mitigation

If one vendor faces challenges or goes out of business, having a vendor-agnostic approach ensures continuity and prevents disruptions. For example, most businesses use a single payment gateway. If the gateway you’re reliant on goes down without a backup and routing rules in place there is potential for significant revenue loss.

Avoiding Vendor Lock-In

Similar to risk mitigation, vendor lock-in, a scenario where a company becomes too dependent on a single provider’s products or services, can be risky. Vendor agnosticism eliminates this risk. A common example is a  software company developing on multiple platforms can easily adapt if one platform’s popularity wanes.

Payment Routing Enables Vendor Agnosticism

Imagine a global e-commerce company with customers spanning across various countries, each with unique payment preferences. If this company is tied to a single payment gateway, they might encounter challenges expanding into new markets or risk alienating customers who have different payment preferences.

By adopting a vendor-agnostic strategy, this e-commerce company implements payment routing to manage multiple payment providers seamlessly.

• They can cater to the diverse payment method preferences of their global customer base
• They can continuously optimize transactions based on real-time data
• They can ensure reliability, with transactions being rerouted in cases of a particular gateway’s downtime

The Role of Payment Routing:

Payment routing intelligently ensures every transaction takes an optimal route, leading to efficiency and customer satisfaction.

• Enhanced flexibility with multiple gateways
• Continuous optimization based on transaction data
• Increased reliability through automated routing and retry rules
• Simplified global expansion with region-specific gateways

Choosing an Agnostic Solution for Your Business

Operational flexibility is everything if you’re looking to scale your business quickly. 

More and more merchants and marketplaces are turning to an agnostic solution to provide them with the business agility and resilience they need. This type of solution keeps your business from becoming locked-in with any singular platform, vendor, or provider, making it possible to build a more dynamic payment tech stack designed to handle modern challenges and demands. 

The freedom to choose the tools and integrations best suited to your business is one of the greatest advantages of this approach. You can adapt your payment strategy efficiently without worrying about undue downtime or disruptions to the customer experience. 

For instance, an agnostic ecommerce platform can give you the ability to integrate multiple different payment gateways and other payment service providers, making it far easier to expand into new regions.

With all of the many advancements to payments technology we have today, you don’t need to tie yourself down to a one-size-fits-all model anymore. You can adopt an approach built specifically for your needs.

As you consider your options for an agnostic solution, make sure to prioritize open payments and payment orchestration. These two services give you everything you need to diversify your payment stack to the max based on the unique requirements of your business and customers. You won’t have to rebuild your payment infrastructure from scratch, either. Instead, you can quickly plug in with local providers in your target regions without causing disturbances to the payment experiences of your existing clientele. 

Payments are changing fast, so you must as well. 

An agnostic strategy can be the core of your success with the right degree of support. Opting for an agnostic solution offers you more than just freedom of choice. It gives you ultimate control over your payments environment. Open payments platforms like Spreedly deliver this vital support, giving you everything you need to orchestrate payments fluidly no matter the volume. 

Becoming Vendor Agnostic Is Important

Being vendor agnostic isn’t just a trend. It’s a strategic move offering flexibility, cost savings, and limiting exposure to risk. An agnostic approach helps a variety of organizations with many different needs. 

For larger enterprises with relationships with many payment providers and rules and routing tools in place, orchestration can be used to complement an existing strategy. In this case the focus may be on performance and optimization. 

For an organization just beginning to augment their stack with additional providers and tools, an agnostic approach fueled by orchestration can help to identify, experiment with, and limit the development and maintenance needs. The focus here may be on capturing as much top line revenue as possible. Regardless of the needs, there are tremendous financial advantages to becoming vendor agnostic.

Book a personalized demo now to explore a vendor-agnostic payments approach for your business.

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