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 Moving
To Digital?
E-Payment Technology Revealed
By Pat McGrew, EDP
August, 2003 - docume.nt processing technology - There is no
question that delivering bills, statements, purchase orders and now
receiving payments online is the hot topic in IT departments around the
world. For those companies that started to make the transition as early
adopters, the pain has likely been felt across a number of departments, from
those who handle the document and forms design to those who program the
applications that fill the customer-facing and supplier-facing applications
with all of the variable data. For those who have been making the transition
in the current climate, the pain may be somewhat reduced in light of the
articles and conference presentations describing the lessons learned.
Regardless of which category you find yourself in, the reality is that the
technologies continue to change! Starting with the basics, the idea of
delivering bills online and receiving payments online are really two
different issues. Most companies have discovered that already. To build an
outbound process to deliver secure e-bills is complex, but well-defined
technology which we have described on this Web site and in our hardcopy
magazine for several years. You must know your application data very well,
and you must critically evaluate your documents and forms to determine the
best way for your organization to deliver them online. For example, do you
want to send an email that invites the recipient to a secure web page with
their bill or do you want to push a secure email with all of the billing
information already included? If you send email, how complex should it be?
Should it be encoded as HTML or sent as plain text? What mechanisms do you
need to determine if the email bounces? What is your feedback mechanism for
responding to inquiries based on the billing email?
It may seem like a great many questions, but for these, there are plenty
of resources to help you to determine what will work best for your type of
company, company culture, and IT needs. More complex are the questions
related to taking in electronic payments. The first question, of course, is
“Do I have to build this myself?” The answer, thankfully, is NO! There are a
huge number of vendors in this market space who will be more than happy to
help you map into their systems for consumer and industrial bill payment.
Why would you use a supplier instead of doing it yourself? A big reason
is the complexity. To receive payments online requires a secure connection
between the payer and your banking system. If you are receiving payments
today through a lockbox or similar operation, your provider or internal
department has the mechanisms in place to open the envelope, scan the check,
encode it, and get the money into the system, generally through the
Automated Clearing House system. It’s a complex, but well-understood
process. To do the same thing online requires secure connections not only
between you and the bank, but between your payer, their bank, you, and your
bank.
To build these networks yourself is not impossible, but it is time
consuming and does require secure networks with good, redundant backup
systems.
While you are considering all of your options, remember that many of your
customers are still not ready to pay online, even if they want to receive
their bill online. Do not make the assumption that there will be a quick
uptake when you first offer the service. In fact, they may want to receive
their bill online and in the mail, and then pay you via check for sometime
to come.
Do you have to get on to the band wagon yourself? Actually, no! For most
billers the truth is that slowly the banks are taking care of the problem
for you. Many customers are more comfortable going online with their banks
or credit unions, and those organizations are moving toward providing free
online bill payment for many of their customers. When they offer that
service, they make the arrangements necessary to move the money from their
account holder to your business accounts. They may simply cut you a check
and mail it to you, or they may to an online transfer. In any case, you get
your money.
What does all of this mean for the owners of documents in the enterprise
that have traditionally done the billing and customer interaction? First, it
means that you need to take care to design your documents so that, going
forward, they can interact as easily online as in print. Take care to use
fonts that will print and view well, take are to use font sizes that will
display appropriately online as well as print well, and consider the use of
color in your customer communication. The next thing that is means is that
you cannot assume that your customers are reading your paper bill or even
opening the envelop that it comes in, so you may want to consider the
emerging technologies associated with billboarding on billing statements.
And, finally, it also means that you should have a long talk with the people
in the financial side of the organization to understand their needs and
issues with regard to accepting inbound customer payments.
Why the discussion? Think about the ability to allow a customer to pay
their bill online and also to interact with your customer service people at
the same time. One stop shopping! It is what most organizations should be
striving for, but you cannot get there if you do not involve all of the
organizations that interact with the customer. That includes the finance
people!
Being able to accept electronic payments can change the way you do
business, but don’t forget that it will be a long time before most of your
customers take advantage of the technology. |
