DaimlerChrysler leading the way in electronic document delivery

DaimlerChrysler Services South Africa (Pty) Ltd is the first vehicle finance house in SA to offer electronic document delivery (EDD) to its clients. The solution provided by CS Holdings has resulted in immediate and sustainable cost savings.

According to Garth Meier, sales manager at CS Holdings, DaimlerChrysler Services (DCS) needed a way of sending secure, encrypted documents via e-mail to clients. "The solution had to comply with South African Revenue Services (SARS) guidelines and be totally secure and non-intrusive to the organisation. The EDD solution also had to show an immediate saving as apposed to using normal print medium.

"EDD delivers a true dot-for-dot rendition of the normally printed document," he continues. "Encrypted at 128-bit, the document is e-mailed to the customer in PDF format. Once opened and/or printed, it looks exactly the same as statements or invoices usually sent to customers in the post. It is also accepted as a legally valid original document, unlike those downloaded directly from the Internet."

DCS decided to use EDD because of the ease-of-use and the fact that no integration was required as EDD obtains its source data from the customer`s current print stream, and runs in a hosted environment. The biggest challenge during the implementation was to acquire clients` e-mail addresses. CS Holdings proposed a call campaign, which would involve calling the DCS clients and collecting their e-mail addresses while updating other details on the DCSA database.

Lenell McNally, CRM Manager DCS, says the call campaign has been extremely successful. "We are in the process of updating our database with the new information. Clients are still offered the choice of delivery; those who do not want to receive their statements via e-mail will continue to receive it via the postal service."

CS Holdings also provides a call centre service to its EDD clients to deal with queries of a technical nature.