Putting e-billing to work

Once you have built a positive business case, and have considered the financial and non-financial benefits of implementing e-billing, it is time to consider the practical steps to implementation. While the specific requirements will differ between organisations, there are basic steps that all potential e-billers need to follow.

File formats should be carefully considered, as each will impact on the customer experience.

Alison Wright, sales and marketing director, The E-mail Corporation

The first consideration is to assess whether your e-billing model will be a push or a pull process. That means that either you will `deliver` your electronic bills by e-mail, or you will `present` your electronic bills on the Web.

There are benefits to both options. The best solution would be to offer delivery of current bills by e-mail and presentation of historical bills on the Web. This leverages the proactive nature of e-mail in pushing the bill to the recipient, but also allows for analysis and interaction with historical bills in a secure Web environment.

For many organisations, the primary obstacle to introducing e-billing is the lack of e-mail addresses on record. Not many organisations recognised early enough how important the e-mail channel would be for business-to-business and business-to-consumer communication. Even organisations that opt for Web presentation require e-mail addresses to communicate effectively with their customers.

Since e-mail has established itself firmly as a cost-effective and efficient channel, many organisations have started gathering customer addresses through their registration processes, and via their customer support centres. However, in many cases, the percentage of e-mail addresses recorded on the customer information system is low.

The quality of this data must also be considered. Depending on how the e-mail address was requested and captured, organisations may find the integrity of this information problematic.

Neither of the above issues should be allowed to scupper an e-billing implementation. While the availability or integrity of e-mail data may delay a project, the gathering of customer addresses can be done quickly and efficiently via a number of methods. Most companies have telephone information on record, and there are data gathering specialists that conduct outbound telephone campaigns, at reasonable cost, to contact your client base and update your database.

Having your clients` e-mail address on record will not only provide the cost savings associated with e-billing, but will open up a host of opportunities for electronic communication.

Another consideration is compliance with the ECT Act, which places certain regulations on electronic communication.

The best way to ensure compliance is to gain permission from your clients to send them digital communication, including authorisation to move them from physical to electronic billing. This permission should be in writing, and should be stored in case of future disputes.

Client sign-up processes need to be amended to record e-mail addresses and obtain permission. In addition, organisations will need to conduct a proactive campaign to gain written authorisation from existing clients.

If you do not plan to ask permission from customers to migrate them to e-billing, then the Act prescribes that you must provide an easy option to unsubscribe from this service.

Processes must be put into place to track responses from clients, or the sender could be in legal hot water. The ECT Act states that should a customer have specified that they do not wish to receive digital communication from the sender, if the e-mails continue, the sender is guilty of an offence.

If your bill is a tax invoice, you need to ensure that the output of your process is approved by your local revenue service. In SA, there are a number of e-billing vendors that produce SARS-approved invoices.

The next consideration is the level of security to build into your process. This should be determined by the degree of sensitivity of the billing information. If the invoice divulges personal information about healthcare, finances, cellular calls or expenditure, it is arguable that this is highly confidential and should be protected both in transit and on the recipient`s machine.

If the document contains information that is not particularly sensitive, then it should be protected in transit, but need not be protected on the recipient`s machine.

Ideally, it should be the recipient`s choice as to the level of security built into the process, and billers should provide the customer with various levels of encryption and authentication.

Another choice that should be afforded the customer is to select their preferred file format. Customers have different needs when it comes to billing data: consumers might prefer to see a presentation format such as HTML or PDF, while businesses want to upload a data format into their accounting package. An e-billing solution should enable the customer to select one or more of these formats according to their requirements.

File formats should be carefully considered, as each will impact on the customer experience. Some formats require specific software in order to view a document, while others will open in a common software application such as a Web browser. For instance, data formats are functional, but should not be used for presentation or printing.

The choice of file format should also take into consideration the type of customer the biller is sending to. The graphical file formats create large files, which can be problematic when sending to dial-up subscribers. File formats based on data (rather than graphics) produce smaller files and are more easily compressed. Graphical file formats print better than most data formats.