Apple overtakes Microsoft. Is the same happening in the world of eBilling?

Last week, Apple overtook Microsoft as the world's most valuable technology company. Wall Street has called it "the end of an era and the beginning of the next one."

"Microsoft depends more on maintaining the status quo, while Apple is in a constant battle to one-up itself and create something new", said Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and an early investor in Facebook.

While Microsoft has struggled to develop desirable updates to its primary products and to create significant new businesses in areas like music players, phones, game consoles and Web search. Apple's rapid expansion and market value is the result of being agile and innovative.

Apple anticipates what consumers want
Apple’s renaissance began with the launch of the iPod music player, and with it came visionary Chief Executive, Steve Jobs’ reputation for anticipating what consumers want. Since then, Mr Jobs and Apple have focused on providing consumers with the best possible experience – in the best computer, the best portable music device, the best smartphone and most recently the best tablet in the iPad.

As audacious as it is to compare Striata to Apple, there are a number of fascinating similarities.

• Striata has a dedicated commitment to designing technology and strategies around consumer preferences (as opposed to software based on billing and document management systems)


• Continuous innovation to produce cutting edge eBilling / eDelivery solutions and adoption methodologies, while everyone else continues down the path of the status quo - fighting low adoption rates with the traditional portal-based presentment model.


• Investing heavily in R&D, not for the present, but for how consumers will want to interact with companies in the future.

What do the consumers of tomorrow want from eBilling?
Since the company’s inception in 1999, everyone at Striata has been asking: Where will consumers want to view and pay bills in 3 years time? Where and on what kind of devices will they be viewing policies, contracts, annual reports, investment information and marketing?

The old guard and traditional market leaders in eBilling like CheckFree (now part of Fiserv) as well as the large print companies such as Kubra and DST Output, are all scrambling to develop their own versions of Striata’s award-winning PUSH eBilling technology. This is a testament to our continuous innovation and customer adoption rates, which are as high as 67% for consumer billing and 98% for commercial billing!

So the question you need to ask is: Do you want to work with a company that is developing technology to meet current market demands, or the company that has led virtually every innovation in this space for the past decade?

Should we expect Wall Street to call it "the end of an eBilling era and the beginning of the next one?" It’s quite possible.

Keen to be a part of the new eBilling era? Tell us what the future of eBilling looks like for you…

Barrie Arnold
Vice President of Sales, America
www.striata.com