5 Reasons why PDF will be the saviour of eBilling and eInvoicing

For many years we have written about why PDF for email bills is the ideal process for eBilling and eInvoicing alike. The proof is in the adoption statistics - 'push' email billing solutions produce double or triple the adoption of paperless processes when compared to web portals.

A recent article by renowned eInvoicing commentator Friso de Yong; 7 myths and 7 facts about PDF invoices, ended with this question to readers: "... aren't PDF e-invoices a great starting point for (1) massive adoption of e-invoicing and (2) a transition to more efficient forms of e-invoicing?"

A key point of this argument is that the bulk of eInvoicing (including EIPP) will be done between SME's and that they will most likely utilise PDF as the format and email as the transport layer.

 

Why PDF is the perfect format for eBilling and eInvoicing:

1. PDF is the accepted standard for exchanging documents between different parties

A parallel can quickly be drawn in the eBilling space, (readers should reacquaint themselves with the differences between eInvoicing and eBilling).

PDF is the perfect format for bills, statements and other documents that can be dematerialised and delivered over email. It provides the option of password security (see Striata's view on No registration, shared secret usage) that is far superior to "secured with spit", a process that the Post Office still seems to think is a good idea.

2. PDF provides multiple layers for both presentation and data

PDFs can include a data layer or an embedded data file with relative ease - this way, the recipient can extract the data into their accounting system or open it in their favourite tool for editing and manipulation.

PDF technology also allows the embedded data to be extracted from the PDF, combined with user input and then reposted back to a server for processing. This is the same process that facilitates 'One-Click' bill payment directly from within the email or mobile bill, which has also been proven to speed up payments and reduce debtors days.

3. Delivering PDF documents by email helps drive paperless adoption

eBilling adoption rates have long disappointed the supporters of paperless processes. While enthusiasts have registered at eBilling portals, many refuse to turn off their paper safety net. Reasons for this behaviour range from "my accountant needs it" to "I like to have a copy in my filing system". Delivering a PDF document by email allows it to be forwarded immediately and electronically saved and backed up and yes - it can also be printed, if required. This makes the transition to a paperless environment less daunting.

4. Secure PDF processes can facilitate portal registration

Striata is often approached by companies with online portals that are languishing in the mid teens for user adoption. No matter how much marketing the company has applied; where there is a registration process and 'pull' back to a web portal, customer adoption plateaus well short of the anticipated numbers. We've proven time and time again that using a secure PDF process can facilitate portal registration through trusted links.

We do believe that there is a requirement for an online portal, as some customers like to have a history or archive of their documents in one place. In fact, the rise of the consolidator portal is testament to this requirement.

5. eConsent splash pages can streamline the on-boarding process

PDF documents also lend themselves to accepting and storing electronic consent. This is often a key hurdle in the go-paperless process. Multiple layers in the PDF allow the user to be presented with a 'splash' page that requires their consent before viewing the actual document. In this way, the requesting, gaining and storing of the electronic consent is all handled as part of a seamless customer experience, that drives the high adoption rates e-billing managers around the world are battling to achieve.

 

The answer to the question?

So in answer to Friso's question "... aren't PDF e-invoices a great starting point for (1) massive adoption of e-invoicing and (2) a transition to more efficient forms of e-invoicing?"

I say YES! I agree.

Michael Wright
striata.com

eBilling vs eInvoicing – Billions vs Billions

Confusion reigns in the land of eBilling and eInvoicing. Which model will save more? Both claim to be able to save billions but most people are unclear on the differences and the drivers behind the current explosion of activity in this area.

Firstly, a couple myths to debunk:

• eInvoicing is not just another Scandinavian government plot to control all commercial activity


• eBilling is not receiving a paper bill and paying it through internet banking


• You can’t actually save a whole Amazon rain forest by switching to eBilling


• eInvoicing is not just an XML replacement of EDI


• Banks don’t want to be your online bill filing cupboard


• There can’t be one consolidator for all consumer bills

Now a few truths to confirm:

• eInvoicing and eBilling can save billions of wasted costs on printing and postage


• eBilling does save the biller more than it saves the consumer (but who’s counting?)


• Consumers do prefer to have their bills emailed to them rather than fetching them from a website


• Cross border eInvoicing is complex and needs careful planning


• You can reduce your DSO (Days Sales Outstanding) by up to 30% through eBilling


• ExPP is good for the environment

With the plethora of noise out in the market about eBilling and eInvoicing, what we need to explain is the difference between the two concepts and when to talk about each one.

At the broadest level:
eInvoicing is the exchange of invoices between businesses (B2B) that regularly do business with each other, automating the Accounts Payable processes of receiving and processing incoming supplier invoices.

eBilling is the delivery of electronic bills to end consumers (B2C) and providing a payment option for them.

eInvoicing is generally highly automated with integrated workflow that needs agreement on standards and specifications, eBilling is the replacement of paper with electronic documents delivered via email (the simplest and easiest model) or via a website (Biller direct, bank aggregator or consolidator models).

Conclusion
So when talking about sending bills to end consumers; talk about eBilling – when talking about creating the Skynet of accounting systems; talk about eInvoicing.

Michael Wright
CEO
www.striata.com

The eBill Knows No Limits

In Asia, eBilling is becoming increasingly popular, with more and more companies launching alternatives to paper bills. Often these are simple emails with a link to a website where the bill can be viewed after logging in. But due to the typically poor take-up of this type of website based “Pull” solution, billers are now adopting email based Push eBilling, with simple pdf or html representations of the paper bill being attached to a carrier email.

As an initial step this is a better solution, however, companies are missing out on some of the main benefits of eBilling by keeping things quite this simple. The fact is that what works on paper doesn’t necessarily work on computer screens.

We can start off with the fact that paper bills are always a “portrait” layout, whereas all computer screens are “landscape”. So there’s all that wasted space at the side of the screen, but still the requirement to scroll down to see the full page. That’s one of the reasons why media websites don’t look like magazines or newspapers that create them. Secondly, the way we read a computer screen is very different from how we read a piece of paper. That’s why Amazon’s Kindle doesn’t render the text in the same way as a book does.

Our expectations of what we will be able to do with an electronic document are also different, and are set by our online experiences. We expect to be able to navigate to where we want to go quickly and intuitively, and expect to drill down into the detail of a topic by clicking a hyperlink. If we’re attracted by a sidebar advert, we expect to be taken straight to the details without losing our place on the original page. Fundamentally, when working online, we expect sensitive personal information (“Just who did you take to Ristorante Romantica last month – it wasn’t me!”) to be securely delivered and password protected in a way that ensures only the intended recipient can access it.

These expectations and behavioural patterns offer companies a huge opportunity to engage their customers at a level never before possible, and to do this every month. Simple summary bills with drill-down capabilities should be the norm. Why not graph the details for more clarity and allow the customer to sort and categorise the transactions too? Navigation within the bill is surely a given (click here to return to the top). The inclusion of carefully targeted eMarketing banners with click-thru tracking goes without saying – transpromotional marketing is one of the most effective forms of cross-selling today. Forms to allow customers to update their details should be included. Of course a printer-friendly rendition of the bill has to be available – and this can be the carbon-copy of the paper bill. Even payment by credit-card or Internet banking from within the eBill itself, without having to log on to a separate website, should be available to all.

But what of the argument that we don’t want to confuse the customer with a new bill layout, so it’s better to give them what they’re used to…? The fact is that a well designed eBill should be easier to read and understand than a paper bill and if it isn’t, there’s a problem with the design that needs to be sorted. The benefits of implementing a comprehensive eBilling solution far outweighs the concerns of customer resistance, and indeed outweigh the cost of developing such a solution.

The bill, and hence the eBill, is often the only regular communication between a service provider and customer, and is certainly the most likely communication to be opened and read in detail. As long as the functionality of the eBill is limited to giving the basic details of the cost of the service provided to the customer, this is an opportunity lost.

Paper bills and the electronic rendition of paper bills have their roots firmly entrenched in the printing technology that became available in the 19th century, and these bills haven’t changed fundamentally for 50 years or more. With communications, energy and banking technologies changing beyond all recognition in the same period, isn’t it time that billing and customer communication strategies and solutions caught up again?

Keith Russell
Sales Director - Asia Pacific
www.striata.com

Outlook 2007 a challenge for e-marketers

Electronic messaging specialist Striata is advising digital marketers to increase planning and testing of e-mail marketing campaigns, following the release of Outlook 2007. According to Mia Papanicolaou, head of e-marketing at Striata, the enhancements included in the new Outlook version do have an impact on e-mail marketing campaigns.

Papanicolaou stresses that marketers should be aware of the new requirements for successfully displaying their communications in Outlook 2007. She indicates as an example, that Outlook 2007 does not display forms such as surveys in the same way as previous versions, and that animated gifs (used for creative effect) will appear as static images.

"What appears in a customer's Outlook 2007 inbox could be different to what the marketer intended if not tested correctly, and therefore the anticipated response or participation levels may be skewed. The end result is that the e-mail campaign does not reach its targeted conversion levels."

Striata recommends conducting extensive testing of e-mails through Outlook 2007, using various coding practices in order to gain a fuller perspective of the impact the new software version has on e-mail presentation.

"Because digital marketing is such a dynamic environment, this kind of testing will be an ongoing exercise for marketers and their service providers," says Papanicolaou. "As an e-marketing agency, it is our responsibility to monitor the effects of new software versions and to manage the possible adverse impacts on the effectiveness of the campaign."

A digital marketing veteran, Papanicolaou adds that there are many tricks to control the execution of an e-mail campaign, even when the 'goalposts keep moving' at the technology level. "For example, to conduct a survey using e-mail, place a link above the form that directs Outlook 2007 users from the e-mail to an online version. You can also track this link in order to start quantifying the number of customers on your database that cannot see forms in their e-mail client."

Papanicolaou warns that as security controls get tighter, graphical images should not be used to convey the message, but rather to support the message. "Not only will new software versions introduce new challenges for e-mail marketers, but system administrators are also increasing their control over what is allowed into their employees' inbox. Embedded images are often the first to be blocked, therefore customers receiving e-mails must be able to read the message without having to see the images."



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About Striata

Striata is the global leader in Secure eDocument Delivery.

Striata's Secure eDocument Delivery and Email Bill Presentment & Payment (EBPP) are solution sets - software applications and adoption methodologies - that deliver rapid reduction in operational costs, quicker payments and enhanced customer service by revolutionising the way bills, statements, contracts, policies, annual reports, payslips and other high volume system-generated documents are delivered and paid.

Unlike today's online presentment solutions, which insist on customers visiting and registering at a website, Striata’s complimentary solution (targeting customers still receiving paper) delivers feature-rich, registration-free, navigable and interactive secure email documents directly to their inbox and enables ‘one-click’ electronic payment without them having to visit a single web-page.

This innovative and strategic change from ‘pull’ to ‘push’ dramatically increases customer adoption of electronic communication, allowing Striata’s clients to achieve rapid ROI from their self-service and e-communication investments.

Visit Striata's Global Site.

Why eBilling?

Why is Electronic Billing (EBPP) all the rage? Is it to cut costs, grow revenue, reduce customer churn or something more? What are the compelling reasons to consider implementing Electronic Billing?

Top 5 Reasons to Implement eBilling

Reason 1: Cost Reduction
The biggest impact that electronic bill presentment has on any organisation is that of significant, instant and measurable cost reduction. Conservative hard cost take-out ranges from 60% to over 90%. These savings are derived from paper suppression and include: printing, insertion, folding, paper, envelopes, and postage.

Additional benefits can also be attributed to soft savings such as manpower, exception handling and general business process improvements. The business case is however so compelling that it is often unnecessary to measure or include these in ROI workings.

Reason 2: Receive Payments Faster
Billing electronically allows companies to receive payments faster and with lower processing costs. For example, in the U.S., first-class mailing rates recently jumped 2 cents but that increase translates into a 2.87 cent hike for business mailers. And mailing costs represent about 70 percent of the cost of invoicing.

In the U.K., postal deliveries have been severely disrupted by a series of strikes by Royal Mail workers.

Why not invoice electronically? It's more economical, you get paid faster and you save those trees.

Reason 3: Reducing Environmental Damage
The green angle of electronic notification and billing has started to resonate with many companies, and consumers themselves who are looking for small but meaningful ways in which they can save the planet.

If all U.S. households received and paid bills electronically, the country would save 16.5 million trees yearly, reduce toxic air pollutants by 3.9 billion tons (equivalent to taking 355,015 cars off the road), and eliminate 1.6 billion pounds of solid waste, says a 2007 survey by Javelin Strategy and Research.

Reason 4: Improved Customer Relationships
Many executives see the flexibility associated with this new technology as a key to becoming more essential to their clients. The more channels of communication that can be supported, the more reliant an organisation's customers are on their relationship with them. It helps maintain client loyalty, and reduces customer churn. While print and mail will always be an important part of the way business is done,many companies are looking to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to communication with clients. Electronic billing achieves this, as well as providing an effective self-service platform, whereby clients can maintain account changes and updates without having to call into a call centre.


Reason 5: Business Growth
While most every potential user understands the implicit revenue benefit in improving customer convenience and satisfaction, many are realising that their electronic billing project assists in achieving incremental revenue goals.

EBPP can leverage the customer data contained in existing CRM systems to personalise bills with customer-specific content and targeted marketing. The more personalised the communication with the customer, the more likely the customer will stay with their biller.

Many providers have invested heavily in CRM in an attempt to learn more about their customers’ interests, desires, and habits. With that new knowledge, providers can leverage their CRM output to deliver efficient and cost-effective EBPP that’s clear, consistent, and personalised to reflect their customers’ preferences.

The bill and recurring account statements are the most frequent touch points between most companies and their customers. Bills and statements arrive month after month.
The bill and recurring account statements are how most companies communicate with their customers. A CRM solution that doesn’t include e-billing and e-statements is missing the mark.


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About Striata

Striata is the global leader in Secure eDocument Delivery.

Striata's Secure eDocument Delivery and Email Bill Presentment & Payment (EBPP) are solution sets - software applications and adoption methodologies - that deliver rapid reduction in operational costs, quicker payments and enhanced customer service by revolutionising the way bills, statements, contracts, policies, annual reports, payslips and other high volume system-generated documents are delivered and paid.

Unlike today's online presentment solutions, which insist on customers visiting and registering at a website, Striata’s complimentary solution (targeting customers still receiving paper) delivers feature-rich, registration-free, navigable and interactive secure email documents directly to their inbox and enables ‘one-click’ electronic payment without them having to visit a single web-page.

This innovative and strategic change from ‘pull’ to ‘push’ dramatically increases customer adoption of electronic communication, allowing Striata’s clients to achieve rapid ROI from their self-service and e-communication investments.

Visit Striata's Global Site.

Electronic invoices could save €10bn a year

From DutchNews

Dutch companies could save €10bn a year if they stopped sending invoices on paper and just used electronic mail, the entrepreneurs organisations VNO-NCW and MKB told Monday's Financieele Dagblad.

At the moment 95% of Dutch companies still send paper invoices even though it costs €30 per invoice compared with €6 for an electronic bill.

According to the two organisations, however, the existing EDI standard for electronic billing is much too expensive and they support the European Commission's plan to develop a new one.

End

Striata has previously reported the following alluring statistics about electronic billing. The focus is mainly on the US market.

• eBilling adoption rates vary from 3 – 8% on average according to Chartwell’s 2005 report (Striata note: This is achieved after 2-3 years, using the traditional 'Pull' method of bringing consumers to a website).
• 90% of email users send and receive email every day, and 44% are on email constantly - DoubleClick’s 6^th Annual consumer Study, 2005
• 76% of consumers would prefer to receive bills via email than having to visit a website - Bank Technology News Research (04/2002)
• 69% of American households pay at least one bill online according to CheckFree in 2006
• 73% of Insurance customers are prepared to pay their bills electronically - MarketSearch Corporation, 2006 - Conducted for Computer Sciences Corporation

All the evidence points to the fact that organisations are slowly understanding the benefits to be achieved with electronic billing.

E-mail Faces Deletion

What follows is an excellent article in debate style from Business Week discussing whether email is doomed to die a slow and painful death.

Will Web 2.0 applications such as Twitter unseat simple electronic mail as the No. 1 business communications tool?

Pro: The New and Improved

by Robert Scoble, Scobleizer

E-mail carries many problems that new tools don’t. For example, e-mail isn’t a good way to share knowledge. When I left NEC (NIPNF), I had 1.5 gigabytes of e-mail, including a lot of valuable information that my replacement would have loved to have access to. But when I left, my e-mail account was turned off. I don’t have access to that knowledge now. Neither does NEC. Same thing when I left Microsoft (MSFT).

What’s more, spam continues to menace e-mail accounts in a big way. I have the best anti-spam technology, but it regularly puts important messages into my spam folder, and spam still gets through.

Finally, e-mail doesn’t work with groups very well. If I send a report to my boss, co-workers can’t listen in and add value. On blogs, on the other hand, that happens all the time. (The best ideas, I’ve found, come from people who aren’t directly involved in the project.) When I was writing a book, the audience made all sorts of improvements. If we had just e-mailed directly to the publisher, we would have lost all those group-work advantages.

So, let’s look at how I use Twitter and other Web 2.0 systems like Pownce and Jaiku.

With these applications, spam barely exists. If someone starts spamming the system, he or she gets “unfollowed” and the problem is solved. And everything gets a permalink and a URL. So if I want to link to it or pass it around or get it into search engines, problem solved. You can’t link to an e-mail.

Everyone has an identity on these applications—a picture. And you can see that people are online and answering stuff and what they are doing. Twitter has an API (Application Programming Interface), so messages can be used in new ways, like the display on twittervision.com.

Another advantage: With Twitter, I can watch the streams for things that interest me. For instance, I can have all messages that include the word BusinessWeek sent to me automatically. E-mail, because its main use-case is private, could never do that.

Furthermore, anything said on Twitter stays on the Web. So your knowledge doesn’t disappear; it stays there for your replacement at your employer to study and learn from.

Does that mean e-mail is going away entirely? No. E-mail is still useful for one-to-one messages that must remain private. But e-mail will find less and less utility inside corporations.

Con: A Solid Cyber-Friend

by Scott Dorsey, ExactTarget

I sometimes joke with friends from my Web 1.0 generation that I have a killer idea for a Web 2.0 application. This application will provide businesses with a communications epicenter that employees can use to send and receive any type of digital media, including text, documents, audio, and video—all for little or no cost. Always on, this application will be based on an open standard that allows all employees to connect with the members of their social network regardless of what network they belong to or what Internet-enabled device they use.

My killer Web 2.0 application is, of course, the e-mail in-box—the very place where the overwhelming majority of today’s workers begin and end their business day. Notably, e-mail is also the primary promotional medium for today’s Web 2.0 companies. Social media stalwarts such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and MySpace (NWS) rely on e-mail as their principal way to connect and gain new members. YouTube (GOOG) and Revver leverage e-mail as a viral engine to extend the reach of their video networks. Even Twitter requires an e-mail address during registration so it can send members critical account information.

Admittedly, e-mail users do have some legitimate gripes with the medium. They wrestle with e-mail etiquette. Their stress levels rise when their unread e-mail volume increases. Their blood boils when unsolicited commercial e-mails circumvent their spam filters and waste their time.

I share these frustrations, but I also realize that the solution for business is not more applications—it’s better applications. Accordingly, I firmly believe we should view e-mail and Web 2.0 technologies not as competitors but rather as evolutionary partners. Their mutual goal should be to establish a spam-free in-box in which e-mail, SMS, RSS, IM, voice, and video—even “tweets” if you like—can co-exist and increase employee productivity.

Need a buzzword for this future vision? Call it “Inbox 2.0,” if you must—a communication center that consolidates all messages in one location while tapping the collective knowledge of social networks to filter out illegitimate senders, organize conversations across media, and prioritize content for employee response.

As for e-mail’s place in Inbox 2.0, I submit that it will be front and center, as it is today. Businesses are, after all, creatures of profit, and e-mail still provides the greatest value for the lowest cost.

Could e-mail’s primacy ever be threatened? You know what they say—never say never. For the foreseeable future, however, Web 2.0 pundits would be wise not to confuse e-mail’s maturity with obsolescence. To do so might be to miss out on the Web 3.0 opportunity of a lifetime.

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[Ed. This confirms Striata's belief that the Inbox is becoming the desktop of the future, where more and more time is spent during an online session. Microsoft's Outlook 2007 is already moving towards "Inbox 2.0", by providing in-application previews of any and all attachments, without having to start a separate application.

Virgin Media monthly 50p E-Billing Discount

Virgin Media recently announced a 50p per month saving for all customers signing up for Electronic Billing.

You can read about the offer here:
http://www.virginmedia.com/customers/yourchanges.php
(scroll down towards the bottom of the page)

and sign up for the service here:
https://ebill2.virginmedia.com/ebilling/Registration.jsp


This is another example of a large investment on a web portal that can process payments. However, according to Striata, most businesses, and even users, tend to avoid logging in to portals to pay one bill. It's just too complex to have to remember login information for every bill you have to pay, particularly for small and medium sized business.

E-mail continues to be the communication medium of choice, yet most billers only offer Internet website presentment. Enticing the customer to go online and register is expensive and generally yields poor results. In addition customers continually forget their usernames and passwords, resulting in expensive phone calls to customer service centres.

In many programmes it takes between 7 and 24 clicks for a customer to find and pay his bill far too many to make the experience worth repeating. And security fears such as Phishing and identity theft are still hindering online payment. Finally, marketers are having difficulty effectively communicating the benefits to the consumer.

AN INTRODUCTION TO SECURE EBPP

There are several ways for billers to ensure that a large percentage of customers migrate to e-Billing. There should be no upfront customer registration, and no need for a customer to visit a website. Customers should not require more than a dial-up connection, and should not have to remember a username and password. The e-Bill should look the same as the paper bill that customers are used to, and they should be able to view and pay it online in under 30 seconds, or save it and pay it later.

This can all be achieved through secure e-mail billing. The e-mail billing process starts when the biller gets a customer's e-mail address commonly at account activation, or when the customer contacts the call centre. Every contact is an opportunity to get this information. A shared secret is chosen that is known only to the biller and the customer. This can be a Social Security number, Zip Code (or postal code), account number or anything else that the customer nominates (and is easy to remember).

The biller then sends the customer his next bill via secure e-mail, and the customer uses the shared secret to decrypt and open his e-Bill. The e-Bill looks exactly the same as the paper bill, and the customer can print it out if required.

The customer enters his banking details and the amount he wishes to pay in the Payment Section at the top or the bottom of the e-Bill (the amount is defaulted to the total amount due), and clicks on PAY. The transaction has been completed with just two clicks.

The payment is then automatically submitted, without the need for the customer to visit a website, and he is sent a popup and an e-mail confirming the payment. The payment flows directly into the billers bank account, exactly like any other ACH payment.

Once one or two e-bills have been successfully received and paid by the customer, the biller automatically stops sending paper bills.

Striata has found that customer feedback has been extremely positive; many said that the email bill saved them time, because they no longer needed to visit a payment centre to settle their accounts. And because they were able to choose the shared secret password themselves, they felt the system was secure.

The answer appears to be to return to basics. Stop trying to change customer behaviour and start inserting your bill into your customers daily routine. As long as you are expecting your customers to do something to turn off paper, its simply not going to happen to any significant degree. Make participation easy and adoption rates will increase to the benefit of both utilities and their customers.



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About Striata

Striata is the global leader in Secure eDocument Delivery.

Striata's Secure eDocument Delivery and Email Bill Presentment & Payment (EBPP) are solution sets - software applications and adoption methodologies - that deliver rapid reduction in operational costs, quicker payments and enhanced customer service by revolutionising the way bills, statements, contracts, policies, annual reports, payslips and other high volume system-generated documents are delivered and paid.

Unlike today's online presentment solutions, which insist on customers visiting and registering at a website, Striata’s complimentary solution (targeting customers still receiving paper) delivers feature-rich, registration-free, navigable and interactive secure email documents directly to their inbox and enables ‘one-click’ electronic payment without them having to visit a single web-page.

This innovative and strategic change from ‘pull’ to ‘push’ dramatically increases customer adoption of electronic communication, allowing Striata’s clients to achieve rapid ROI from their self-service and e-communication investments.

Visit Striata's Global Site.

Climate Change Concerns More Corporations - eBilling Can Help Your CSR

Climate change is increasingly topping the agenda in companies across the world. More and more businesses are searching for ways to protect the environment, and their profits.

The topic of climate change has also entered boardrooms. Top brass have warmed to the notion of cutting back on work-related flights, as well as driving cars which emit fewer emissions, and implementing green energy and electronic billing.

Susanna Monni is the Executive Director at Finnish Business and Society, a network which encourages corporations to embrace social responsibility. She said that Al Gore's Nobel and Oscar award-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, delivered a powerful global message on climate change. The Stern Report, which put a price tag on the effects of climate change, also shook up the business world.

Image is also part of the bargain. Consumers in industrialised countries are increasingly selecting products with certifications of sustainability, or from companies with 'green' images.

Source: YLE News

Striata have calculated that for every 500,000 bills printed, the following environmental damage is done:

•

• 13 tons of paper is used
  
• 26 tons of trees are destroyed
  
• 214,000 gallons of water is used
  
• 25,233 pounds of solid waste is generated
  
• 780 pounds of air emissions are spewed out
  
• 65,754 pounds of greenhouse gases are emitted

(Using tools provided at papercalculator.org)

Implementing eBilling provides a powerful Corporate Social Responsibility message to your customers and shareholders.

How Does eBilling Work?

eBilling, or electronic billing, enables billers to create and distribute digital bills to their customers instead of printing and mailing out paper bills. The obvious advantage of e-bill from a biller perspective is related to cost, especially as postal delivery fees continue to rise.

For large, major billers, there are two predominant distribution methods for e-bill, biller-direct, and/or through a consumer service provider (CSP). Many billers choose to distribute e-bills via both channels, as opposed to just choosing one.

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About Striata

Striata is the global leader in Secure eDocument Delivery.

Striata's Secure eDocument Delivery and Email Bill Presentment & Payment (EBPP) are solution sets - software applications and adoption methodologies - that deliver rapid reduction in operational costs, quicker payments and enhanced customer service by revolutionising the way bills, statements, contracts, policies, annual reports, payslips and other high volume system-generated documents are delivered and paid.

Unlike today's online presentment solutions, which insist on customers visiting and registering at a website, Striata’s complimentary solution (targeting customers still receiving paper) delivers feature-rich, registration-free, navigable and interactive secure email documents directly to their inbox and enables ‘one-click’ electronic payment without them having to visit a single web-page.

This innovative and strategic change from ‘pull’ to ‘push’ dramatically increases customer adoption of electronic communication, allowing Striata’s clients to achieve rapid ROI from their self-service and e-communication investments.

Visit Striata's Global Site.

Online Bill Payments Surpass Checks for the First Time Among Internet- Connected Households

ATLANTA - A new study reported today finds that for the first time, consumers in Internet-connected households are paying more of their household bills online than by check. The survey was conducted in January 2007 by Harris Interactive and The Marketing Workshop. (Source: CheckFree Corp.).

For the first time, consumers in Internet-connected households are paying more of their bills online than by paper check, according to a new study conducted by Harris Interactive and the Marketing Workshop.

The 2007 Consumer Bill Payment Survey showed that, for the first time, online bill payments exceeded bill payments made by paper check among online households.

Online payments made up 39% of the total volume of bill payments among online households, an increase of 4 percentage points over a December 2005 survey. In contrast, the volume of checks sent through the mail fell 4 percentage points to 34% of the overall volume.

Striata has found another study by Aite Group predicts that online payments will rise to 28% by 2010. At the same time, check usage for consumer bill payment is falling rapidly, from 50% in 2005 to 27% in 2008 (also predicted by the Aite Group).

The rush to accept electronic payments has been a major driver of Electronic Bill Presentment and Payment (EBPP) programs for many. The focus appears to be shifting. Electronic bill presentment is now being pushed more urgently, in the hopes of reducing printing and mailing costs, and saving a few trees.

eBilling Video Spoof

More great reasons to opt for electronic billing.
Found on YouTube - a spoof of the massive iPhone bill video.
Caution - contains strong language.

What is eBilling? Video Explains All

Electronic Billing is the electronic delivery and presentation of financial statements, bills, invoices, and related information sent by a company to its customers. Electronic billing is also referred to as the following:

• e-billing or eBilling
  
• EBPP — Electronic Bill Presentment and Payment
• EIPP — Electronic Invoice Presentment and Payment

Why is eBilling a Good Idea?

View this eBilling video:

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About Striata

Striata is the global leader in Secure eDocument Delivery.

Striata's Secure eDocument Delivery and Email Bill Presentment & Payment (EBPP) are solution sets - software applications and adoption methodologies - that deliver rapid reduction in operational costs, quicker payments and enhanced customer service by revolutionising the way bills, statements, contracts, policies, annual reports, payslips and other high volume system-generated documents are delivered and paid.

Unlike today's online presentment solutions, which insist on customers visiting and registering at a website, Striata’s complimentary solution (targeting customers still receiving paper) delivers feature-rich, registration-free, navigable and interactive secure email documents directly to their inbox and enables ‘one-click’ electronic payment without them having to visit a single web-page.

This innovative and strategic change from ‘pull’ to ‘push’ dramatically increases customer adoption of electronic communication, allowing Striata’s clients to achieve rapid ROI from their self-service and e-communication investments.

Visit Striata's Global Site.

Electronic Billing Saves Trees - People urged to go the paperless route

BY CATHY JETT

Switch to online banking and bill paying and help to save the planet.

That's the message a number of banks and businesses soon will be using to persuade consumers to go paperless.

"Many consumers do not realize the full impact their household could make by simply asking to turn off paper bills and statements once they've adopted online banking," Stuart Williams, co-chair of the Electronic Payments Association's new "green coalition," said in a prepared statement.

A new study by Calif.-based Javelin Strategy and Research, for example, found that if all the nation's households just received and paid bills electronically, they'd save 16.5 million trees each year, or the amount of lumber needed to build 216,054 typical single-family homes.

The Electronic Payments Association's "green coalition" also plans to play up the environmentally friendly aspect of going paperless in a campaign it has begun planning. It will likely consist of information large companies can use to encourage their customers to go paperless.

"Consumers want to take individual action that can collectively lead to real impact on the environment," said Craig Vaream, the other green coalition co-chair. "Through this initiative, we want consumers to recognize that choosing electronic bills, statements and payments provides the additional benefit of eliminating the unnecessary waste of natural resources."

The ability to go online to do everything from checking bank statements to getting bills and paying them has been around since the mid-1990s when such institutions as Bank of America, Citibank and Wells Fargo rolled out the option. But it's started to catch on only in the last few years.

Today, more than half of all households in the United States make at least one recurring payment online and four out of five consumers who use it say they are very satisfied with it, according to the Electronic Payments Association.

And direct payment, which is an automated debit from a customer's account, increased by 6.1 percent to 4.7 billion payments in 2006, it found.

At Verizon, about 1.7 million customers now get their statements online, said Angeline DePauw, the utility's director of electronic remissions. But that accounts for only about 5 percent of all the billing Verizon does.

The company is focusing on getting the 8 million customers who currently pay their Verizon bill online but continue to get paper statements to make the switch to online statements.

"They're the ones who are more apt to do it," DePauw said.
Currently, when Verizon customers sign up for online banking, their financial institution automatically enrolls them in the Electronic Billing Information Delivery System (EBID) for 90 days.

EBID will post a note on their personal online bank page saying how much their next Verizon bill is and the due date, plus provide a link to the utility company.

"Most people, if it looks reasonable, will pay," DePauw said.

Online banking also has become popular at Wachovia spokeswoman, said Christine Shaw.
The Charlotte, N.C.-based bank's online banking features allow customers to see all of their Wachovia accounts--including bank accounts, mortgages and investments--on one site. They also can see scanned images of their checks, and set up recurring bills so they're paid automatically.

"It's convenient," said Shaw. "You don't have to pay for a stamp, and it's real easy to transfer funds from one account to another. You can look at all your transactions online and review them online."

Wachovia also encourages customers to check their accounts frequently to head off identity fraud, she said.

Going paperless cuts down on the risk of identity fraud, which is more like to happen offline where family, friends and employees have access to financial statements, than online, according to studies done by both Javelin Strategy and Research and the Better Business Bureau in 2003.

Bruce Cundiff, Javelin's online payments expert, said his company also has found that online customers are more likely to catch identity fraud early because they can monitor their accounts anytime, not just when monthly statements arrive in their mailbox.

Soon, online customers will even be able to get messages about their accounts on their cell phones, and contact their bank, credit-card company or other financial institution immediately if something seems amiss, he said.

Mobile devices allow the conversation to be two-way, something Javelin calls "interactive financial messaging," Cundiff said.

"Say I got a mobile message saying, 'Are you trying to send $5,000 to Eastern Europe?' I can e-mail back, 'No, don't let it go.' It's actually preventing fraudulent activity by stopping it in its tracks."

Cathy Jett: 540/374-5407



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About Striata

Striata is the global leader in Secure eDocument Delivery.

Striata's Secure eDocument Delivery and Email Bill Presentment & Payment (EBPP) are solution sets - software applications and adoption methodologies - that deliver rapid reduction in operational costs, quicker payments and enhanced customer service by revolutionising the way bills, statements, contracts, policies, annual reports, payslips and other high volume system-generated documents are delivered and paid.

Unlike today's online presentment solutions, which insist on customers visiting and registering at a website, Striata’s complimentary solution (targeting customers still receiving paper) delivers feature-rich, registration-free, navigable and interactive secure email documents directly to their inbox and enables ‘one-click’ electronic payment without them having to visit a single web-page.

This innovative and strategic change from ‘pull’ to ‘push’ dramatically increases customer adoption of electronic communication, allowing Striata’s clients to achieve rapid ROI from their self-service and e-communication investments.

Visit Striata's Global Site.

Landmark Survey Reveals Significant Environmental Impact by Organizations and Customers Who Embrace Electronic Billing and Settlement

SAN FRANCISCO, CA, August 21, 2007 - AVOLENT, a leading provider of self-service eBilling and eSettlement software, today released recent survey results illustrating the environmental impact business organizations have by offering electronic billing and payment software in partnership with their customers who embrace a paperless business relationship. Current AVOLENT customers included in this study include DELL, HP, Xerox, OfficeDepot, Highmark, Do It Best, and more.

Implementing AVOLENT software proves to have a domino effect of benefits to the environment. The need for paper products is eliminated in the billing and payment processes for customers who have adopted online invoicing and payment. Using calculations supplied by the Environmental Defense Fund ( www.papercalculator.org ) over 1,000,000 trees every year are saved due to this adoption. The preservation of these trees ensures that over 300 million pounds of green house gases are not released into our atmosphere, over 1 billion gallons of wastewater is saved, and over 100 million pounds of solid waste generated by paper manufacturing and landfill additions is eliminated.

AVOLENT customers say:

"The advantages of paperless billing and payment are overwhelming. Not only does electronic invoice delivery and online payment help preserve many aspects of the environment, but our customers are demanding more and more of our business relationship be completed over the web."

"Over 80% of our customers have adopted paperless billing and payment with us which translates into real and sustaining customer loyalty and an enormous reduction in operational cost and environmental waste."

"In environmental terms, AVOLENT paperless billing and payment effectively saves enough trees each year to populate the entire state of Rhode Island, and saves enough of our precious natural resources to power a small city," said Mike Seashols, Chairman and CEO of AVOLENT. "AVOLENT is proud that this is a 'convenient truth' to be shared with everyone. Each individual and each organization can have a direct impact on our environment by electing to be part of paperless electronic billing and payment manifesto."

About AVOLENT
AVOLENT is a leading provider of best-of-breed application software for self-service eBilling and eSettlement. The AVOLENT solution suite transforms an organization's paper invoices and manually intensive billing and settlement process into a web-based self-service electronic process that drives higher customer loyalty, enhances customer satisfaction, and improves operational efficiencies, while also preserving our natural resources. Organizations like DELL, Hewlett-Packard, Xerox, Highmark, PacifiCare, Office Depot, Penske Leasing, and many others use AVOLENT as their electronic billing and settlement engine to process over one billion dollars of invoices per week and preserve over a million trees every year with paperless invoicing and settlement. AVOLENT is headquartered in San Francisco, CA. For additional information about AVOLENT, visit www.avolent.com

Press Contact:
AVOLENT
Anthony Mejia
Vice President, Marketing
415.553.6400



---------------------------------------------------------------

About Striata

Striata is the global leader in Secure eDocument Delivery.

Striata's Secure eDocument Delivery and Email Bill Presentment & Payment (EBPP) are solution sets - software applications and adoption methodologies - that deliver rapid reduction in operational costs, quicker payments and enhanced customer service by revolutionising the way bills, statements, contracts, policies, annual reports, payslips and other high volume system-generated documents are delivered and paid.

Unlike today's online presentment solutions, which insist on customers visiting and registering at a website, Striata’s complimentary solution (targeting customers still receiving paper) delivers feature-rich, registration-free, navigable and interactive secure email documents directly to their inbox and enables ‘one-click’ electronic payment without them having to visit a single web-page.

This innovative and strategic change from ‘pull’ to ‘push’ dramatically increases customer adoption of electronic communication, allowing Striata’s clients to achieve rapid ROI from their self-service and e-communication investments.

Visit Striata's Global Site.

eBilling Adoption Examined

It is approximately 12 years since the Internet and email began its significant impact on our lives. In that time, there is almost no aspect of our daily activities that is not influenced by this. In the USA today, over 80% of all Americans between the age of 10 and 70, access the internet multiples time a week, the vast majority doing so every day, and as high as 35%, many times a day.

A subgroup of internet and email is electronic billing – the ability for a consumer or business with access to the internet, to be able to view and pay their bill or invoice through their personal computer. This is an emerging trend that is still however in its infancy. The majority of consumers, over 95%, still receive almost all of their bills in paper form. Although it is becoming more common to pay some bills either through a bank’s billpay service or at the biller’s own website, the primary driver of electronic billing, that being paper suppression, is not being realized.

There is a massive and growing awareness of the environmental impact of paper production. For every 38,500 bills produced, 1 ton of paper is used, 2 tons of trees are destroyed, 16,450 gallons of water is used, 1,941 pounds of solid waste is generated, 60 pounds of air emissions are spewed out and 5,058 pounds of greenhouse gases are emitted. (www.papercalculator.org) Billers in the USA for example, produce (at a minimum) 14 to 16 pieces of paper and as many envelopes, per customer per annum. That is 7,5 million pieces of paper per year for a mid market biller with 500 000 customers, or in green terms, 400 tons of trees…

Let’s take a moment to examine why that is:

• Right now, the consumer does not need to do anything; the paper bill arrives without them having to perform any action. It is the way it has happened all of their lives and there is currently no compelling reason to do it any other way.
• The electronic billing offerings that are prevalent in this industry (in the USA) all involve the following:

1. The utility needs to, and in most cases has, built a self-service website. I.E.: a location on the internet where a consumer can go and view and pay their bill.
2. However, the consumer does not know it is there unless expensive marketing is undertaken.
3. Sadly, there is neither incentive nor compelling reason to visit these websites. In all cases, it is quicker and more convenient to write a check and drop it in the USPS mail, even at a 41c cost.
4. The best websites require a consumer to register, choose and remember (yet another) username & password.
5. They require between 6 to as many as 14 clicks to view & pay the bill.
6. At very best, it takes three to eight times as long to do so than writing a check.
7. They require consumers to learn different navigation for each biller’s website.
8. A copy of the bill is available online, but in every case it is not the first thing that the consumer sees. So the familiarity is lost and the consumer feels that something has been taken away from them.
9. The result? Even if some do pay online, 95% still get a paper bill too.
10. To make matters worse, now that the ‘innovators’ and a portion of the ‘early adopters’ are paying online, it is becoming progressively more difficult (and increasingly more expensive) for billers to attract their consumers to their self service portals.
11. From the biller’s perspective, most are now on second or even third generation websites after three to six years. Hundreds, if not thousands of dollars have been spent on building, servicing & supporting these initiatives and the Return on Investment is nowhere even remotely in sight.

Our take on this? The model is fatally flawed and will not result in significant paper suppression.

The Future of Electronic Billing – Your Inbox

Within the realm of internet driven technology, the single most pervasive application is that of email.

Let's take a few steps back and think about the time before email. There were four kinds of paper mail; Junk mail, Business / work related mail, Personal mail , and of course, your bills.

These days, in the email era, three of the four mail types have made their way directly into your inbox. The one type that is conspicuously missing are your bills. Now why is that? There is no clear answer that we can come to. We can only guess that it was easier for the biller to try and 'pull' you to his website than to electronically deliver you your bill.

However, recent research tells us that the average internet user is spending 96% of his online time handling his email. (Just think about the amount of time you personally spend handling email communication as opposed to visiting websites.)

Billers now have access to efficient systems & technology that securely deliver your bill, and take payment, directly from within your inbox. The difference from a customer's perspective is dramatic: two clicks to view and pay your bill.

E-mail has become the ubiquitous business and personal communication medium. Our take on the future of electronic billing: There is no logical nor practical reason why your bills are not in your inbox, and it is only a matter of time before they are. Billers are going to combine both 'push' and 'pull' Electronic Bill Presentment and Payment strategies to ensure maximum customer adoption.

Imagine getting all your bills directly into your inbox. Imagine that paying each bill took less than 30 seconds. Now that's delivering true electronic billing convenience.



---------------------------------------------------------------

About Striata

Striata is the global leader in Secure eDocument Delivery.

Striata's Secure eDocument Delivery and Email Bill Presentment & Payment (EBPP) are solution sets - software applications and adoption methodologies - that deliver rapid reduction in operational costs, quicker payments and enhanced customer service by revolutionising the way bills, statements, contracts, policies, annual reports, payslips and other high volume system-generated documents are delivered and paid.

Unlike today's online presentment solutions, which insist on customers visiting and registering at a website, Striata’s complimentary solution (targeting customers still receiving paper) delivers feature-rich, registration-free, navigable and interactive secure email documents directly to their inbox and enables ‘one-click’ electronic payment without them having to visit a single web-page.

This innovative and strategic change from ‘pull’ to ‘push’ dramatically increases customer adoption of electronic communication, allowing Striata’s clients to achieve rapid ROI from their self-service and e-communication investments.

Visit Striata's Global Site.

Carbon Footprint and eBilling

Big business organisations are coming under increasing pressure to reduce carbon gas emissions to contain the greenhouse effect and slow down global warming. An efficient, cost effective and easily implemented way for businesses to play a practical, effective role in carbon reduction is to stop paper billing and adopt the electronic equivalent, eBilling.

The global green movement, driven by mainly young people in Europe, the UK and Australasia, offers some frightening statistics. Three hundred years ago (a miniscule period of time in the Earth's history) the carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere was just 200 ppm (parts per million).

Today that level has nearly doubled to 380 ppm and over the last 100 years global temperatures have risen by 1ºC. Scientists predict that unless the world co-operates and implements the Kyoto Protocol, carbon levels could reach 500 ppm by 2050 with an average global temperature rise of 3ºC, which will be a turning point for imbalances and snowballing seriously adverse impacts on our society.

Banks, financial institutions, insurance companies, utility service providers, telcos and other organisations with large monthly-billed customer bases can make a significant contribution to carbon emission reductions by implementing electronic billing and turning off their paper stream of invoices and statements wherever possible. Recently, the top-40 listed companies on the JSE participated in a carbon disclosure project (CDP) to establish exactly what impact business practices have on the environment.

There have been reports in local newspapers that international buyers have serious concerns about environmental impact and South African companies will find it more and more difficult to sell their products in world markets. The reports also say that South Africa's carbon dioxide production has more than doubled from 1980 and that local exporters are already being affected by large retailers in the UK and the EU which have implemented carbon labelling. Some EU retailers have begun calling for punitive trade measures to root out environmentally unsustainable production processes and force businesses into action to mitigate their impacts.

There have also been reports that carbon reporting will also increasingly influence investment decisions and some analysts believe that large pension funds could move their funds out of carbon-inefficient investments into stocks that support a sustainable environment.

How can eBilling help?

By converting a large proportion of paper-based communications to secure electronic communications, companies can achieve significant carbon credits.

Lloyds Bank in the UK has identified paper use as one of its four key performance Indicators. The company has a retail customer base of around 17-million people and made some calculations based on the mailing each month of 15-million sheets of paper (bank statements) in15-million paper envelopes.

The bank estimated its paper eBill production cost (including postage, but excluding costs such as rent, staff and power) amounted to 18p (R2.52) per eBill. A maximum of 30% of the customer base could be converted to eBilling (an extremely conservative assumption).

Lloyds established that the annual impact on the environment (limited to the eBill production process, and excluding the delivery of bills) was 4,675 tons of paper used, 9,351 tons of trees destroyed, 306-million litres of water used, 4-million kgs of solid waste produced and almost 11-million kgs of gases emitted.

Based on these estimations, implementation of a secure electronic document delivery solution could result in bottom line savings of £16-million (about R224-million) over five years against set up fees of less than £150 000. Including licence fees, this would result in a return on investment in less than five months.

Apart from the obvious short-term benefits, there could be more significant long-term benefits for companies reducing their carbon outputs. In Europe, companies are already being given carbon credit rewards for doing so.

In the US, the Electronic Payments Association and Javelin Strategy & Research have been promoting online eBill payment and online eBill acceptance as ways for consumers to reduce carbon emissions, waste in landfills and to save trees. Their research revealed that if every American household viewed and paid its bills online, it would reduce solid waste in U.S. landfills by more than 800 000 tons a year and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2.1 million tons.

American banks are actively promoting green consciousness amongst their customer bases by urging them to make payments online. A recent national survey established that 94% of Americans say they are willing to make changes in their lives to help the environment. The survey concluded that going green was no longer just the right thing to do, but is also seen as being very positive for a company's bottom line.

SA appears to be lagging in the global race to go green. In global terms, SA is not a large producer of carbon emissions but, measuring carbon emissions against gross domestic product, it has a dismal footprint. Pressure is mounting to improve that status and Johannesburg is one of 30 cities worldwide whose mayors are campaigning to encourage national governments to support city leaders in combating climate change.

eBilling is proving a fast, convenient and environmentally friendly payment option worldwide which achieves results. For every 38 500 bills produced, a ton of paper is used, two tons of trees are destroyed, 65 000 litres of water is used and 2 500kg of greenhouse gases are emitted. By implementing eBilling, not only are costs reduced but the impact on the environment is dramatically curtailed.

If you would like to calculate your personal carbon footprint, this is an interesting calculator.



---------------------------------------------------------------

About Striata

Striata is the global leader in Secure eDocument Delivery.

Striata's Secure eDocument Delivery and Email Bill Presentment & Payment (EBPP) are solution sets - software applications and adoption methodologies - that deliver rapid reduction in operational costs, quicker payments and enhanced customer service by revolutionising the way bills, statements, contracts, policies, annual reports, payslips and other high volume system-generated documents are delivered and paid.

Unlike today's online presentment solutions, which insist on customers visiting and registering at a website, Striata’s complimentary solution (targeting customers still receiving paper) delivers feature-rich, registration-free, navigable and interactive secure email documents directly to their inbox and enables ‘one-click’ electronic payment without them having to visit a single web-page.

This innovative and strategic change from ‘pull’ to ‘push’ dramatically increases customer adoption of electronic communication, allowing Striata’s clients to achieve rapid ROI from their self-service and e-communication investments.

Visit Striata's Global Site.