CLICK - Power and Speed Statements




Trends and Challenges

In today’s market, customers are attracted by more than low prices alone. Business customers in particular demand additional services from their providers. Customers choose and stay with the service provider that best meets their business needs and lets them control use of their services. A better understanding of their customer’s behavior allows them to optimize the subscription of such services.

Wireless service providers, Banks and Insurance companies are seeking unified statement delivery solutions as the diversity of services offered rise. Multiple services in telecommunications such as local to long distance, cable T.V. and cable modem, and so on necessitate a single billing system that not only simplifies the delivery process but also saves vast amounts of billing expenses while increasing customer satisfaction. These systems must allow a single stop billing for both prepaid and postpaid plans, and overcome varying profit margins between the two options. This would grant the consumer the freedom to switch between accounts rapidly while retaining the same handset.

In addition, mergers and acquisitions among major service providers in telecoms, banks, insurance company’s are expected to drive demand for unified statement solutions that assist in consolidating statement delivery operations in a cost-effective manner.

Despite the growth of EBP, there have been many issues, which have affecting the EBP market. One of the main issues is undoubtedly the low level of Internet penetration and overcoming customer disdain for online payment. Considering the low volume of transactions, building a business model which will make electronic billing a profitable venture is a major challenge

In addition, there are technology issues like providing online instantaneous credit to the bank account of the utility company, and confirmation from utility to customer on completion of a transaction. The EBP market is also affected by the minimal number of players who can develop a plug-and-play module to integrate banks with utility companies.

The challenge is also in integrating different service providers with banking systems. Besides these, customers and service providers have to be educated about the conveniences of this facility. Other common issues are confidentiality of the billing information and the time taken to update the customer database after reconciliation. In addition, security and payment integration with multiple payment processors or banks are some of the main obstacles.

External Vendor Software Reduces Need for Manpower

The growing need for carriers to reduce operational expenses is propelling adoption of statement delivery solutions. These solutions are automated, and therefore, offer carriers the flexibility of lowering operational costs through reduced internal headcount while simultaneously maintaining productivity. Unified statement delivery solutions are also expected to increase network capacity and decrease need for network hardware.

However, these solutions are dogged by controversy, as managements within service providers are indecisive regarding eliminating positions within a department that may be redundant once the external vendor software is deployed. "On the other hand, the lucrative benefits of cost savings are tilting the balance in favor of billing software from an external vendor.’’

Mounting Use of Communications Devices also Propels Deployment of Statement Delivery / Billing Software

As the use of communications devices escalates globally, wireless and broadband subscriber growth is expected to develop at a consistent rate in the near future, particularly in regions such as Asia and Latin America.

With the number of users (customers) and communications events (transactions) per user increasing, demand for billing solutions is anticipated to rise. This will be furthered by the influx of service providers in emerging markets and the maturing of close communications verticals. The intensification in the use of communications is likely to boost demand for effective billing software as the need to control churn rates and revenue leakage becomes an urgent priority.

Our Product

SEEinfobiz’s CLICK – Power and Speed Statements , combine comprehensive e-billing, e-invoicing, e-statements, e-payments, e-analysis and printing functionalities across different industries i.e. Telecom, Banking, Insurance, Utilities, Medical, Logistics, Manufacturing and more. It provides specific capabilities for both B2B and B2C customers.

 CLICK is designed to facilitate electronic processing, batch printing, web presentation, auto distribution (email / fax / sms) and online payment of billing statements, with strong emphasis on secure information delivery.

CLICK extends the convenience of online billing to an organization's entire customer base, as well as to its call centers for requests such as duplicate printing, itemized views, enquiries for specific charges, cross selling etc. With its advanced self-service features and best practices, the application enables companies to offer a superior online experience that increases customer satisfaction and loyalty, while decreasing the cost of servicing those customers.

CLICK provides flexibility for customers to choose how statements will be viewed, ordered, and presented and empowers customer analysis of billing information. It enables customers to view, print, analyze, download (excel, word, PDF, ps, CSV, TSV etc), drill down on their statements.

It also provides online payment of bills, automatically and electronically, offering full integration with existing systems. What is more, the suite delivers all of this information to the users via a standard web browser, in such away that they can perform all functions intuitively, without training.

• Corporate and Consistent Look and Feel

CLICK is an integral part of the corporate web site. It has the ability to adapt to the corporate look and feel of any part of the customer’s website, making it impossible for the user to distinguish the EBPP (Electronic Bill Presentment and Payment) elements from other areas of the website. Furthermore, Bills / Statements are displayed in Dynamic Hypertext Mark-up Language (DHTML), and consequently have the best possible resolution and clarity.

• No End User Training

CLICK allows companies to deploy bill processing and delivery management without any end user training and zero installation of software on the client’s desktop system. It provides simple access from web browsers and has zero supplementary plug in or applet requirements. Users can intuitively navigate complex and sophisticated pieces of applications software at the time that suits them.

• Scalability

The fundamental design principle behind CLICK – Power and Speed Statements, is to contribute to a truly scalable solution that can handle hundreds of thousands of users. CLICK’s EBPP server architecture is designed to offer near linear scalability. As the user community grows your solution can scale by simply adding CPU’s. CLICK’s EBPP is being used to deliver consistent, web-performance to hundreds of thousands of users.

• Integration with Corporate standards for Security

Many customers have adopted a standard security product for the maintenance and update of user permissions and profiles. LDAP is a popular example here. CLICK can integrate seamlessly with the existing security standard and avoid having to duplicate what can be a timely and costly job of managing user permissions.

• Caching

In set up it is possible to run CLICK – Power and Speed Statements at a pre-determined time (perhaps overnight) and then hold it in cached memory. When a customer requests a view of their bill, they are viewing a cached content. This is important as it removes the need to have customers accessing the live operational billing database. This is particularly important when the size of the user base gets larger and the size of the statements gets larger. However it is also possible to refresh the cache on demand for near to real time data refresh which may be required in certain cases as bank balance statements.

• Page Level Security

CLICK provides the ability to deliver page level security to customers. Page Level Security allows you to deliver personalized views of information to thousands of users without the database and administrative overhead of having to create and manage thousands of documents.

For e.g. the CFO of a Blue Chip Company needs to view the whole statement, whereas the Area Manager only needs (and therefore only has access) to that part of the statement pertaining to the area for which he is responsible. Incase of mobile phone services only customers who have paid for itemized mobile phone billing services will get access to the detailed bill section, whereas customer service executives will get viewing access to the summarized and detail section of the bill.

With CLICK this scenario represents one statement. It offers personalized, secure views of subsets of the statement controlled by the security sub-system. Without page level security, requirements from three different people or departments are usually met by three different statements with a resulting impact on processing and maintenance. This might not be an issue if only three statements are required but when there are thousands of customers needing possibly hundreds of thousands of sub statements it becomes a major issue for administration.

• Page on Demand

CLICK offers a unique facility called on-demand paging. The statement that a Customer / Dealer or Chief Financial Officer accesses can be hundreds or even thousands of pages in size. The users might wish to view subsets of the bill, or "step through", from page 1 to page 700. CLICK’s Page on Demand throws only one page at a time to the browser, and gives the user ability to do this with instantaneous, consistent performance. The statement also being accessed through cached memory, does not impact the operational billing database.

• Dynamic Statement Designs  

CLICK provides the flexibility of incorporating different bill designs for different customer segments such as corporate, university students, teenagers, senior citizens etc.  

• Ad Serving  

With CLICK you can provide customized advertising messages based on individual customer-specific account information. This creates additional revenue generation opportunities and improves marketing efficiency by reducing direct mail and telemarketing costs. Furthermore, since offers are so highly targeted, customers are more likely to respond to them.  

• Multi Lingual Support  

CLICK supports distribution of statements in different languages, and also supports Unicode. This increases the reach and utility of application for customers who are sensitive to receiving bills in specific languages. 

• Platform and Database Independent  

Click is a platform independent product and works across Windows, all flavors of UNIX (HP/SUN/IBM etc) and Linux. It also connects to any kind of data sources such as Oracle, SAP, EDI files, text files, DB2, Progress residing on hybrid platforms.

• Historical Monthly / Yearly Statement History and Online Archive

CLICK gives organizations and their customer’s flexibility to store months / years of historical account statements without degrading performance or increasing storage costs.

• Online-analysis functionality  

Interactively analyze all statement data over an arbitrary number of billing periods. Statement data can be filtered or analyzed according to various criteria, for example per subscriber or per charge type. Summarized data exist per subscriber (monthly charge, one time charge, discount etc), and individual CDRs can be analyzed for each subscriber or cost center. Results can be viewed in tabular or 2D/3D graphical form.  

• Statements presented in different output formats

A statement presented through CLICK can be viewed by the user in several different formats, which offers the end user both flexibility and choice:

• Dynamic HTML (DHTML)

Delivered to their desktop via a browser without the need for any client software (downloads or applets) to be installed on the PC

• To a Printer via PDF / Postscript

Many clients will still want to print their bill (or personalized element of their bill). CLICK can deliver "picture perfect", high quality printed statements in PDF format, without issues of headers and footers missing - a well-known problem normally associated with "standard" printing from a browser.

• XML output

XML output enables automated application-to-application integration, for example to provide closed loop automated bill payment. Customers can download XML data into their operational systems for accounting purposes too. As with the principle of page level security, it is important to reiterate here that these output options need only one statement to be written. The output can be determined at "run-time". In many other products different output formats require separate statements.

• Ability to access multiple data sources

Many of our existing customers have multiple data sources that they need to access as part of their e.Billing solution. Often these are mixed environments – EJBs, spreadsheets, flat files, relational databases, EDI (Electronic Data Interchange files) etc. CLICK enables you to consolidate all of your data assets whatever the underlying data platform, in order to provide statements on the web, print, email, word etc

• Combined Billing Statement

CLICK creates a single consolidated view of all of a customer's accounts by aggregating billing information from multiple disparate legacy systems.

• Online payment and Advanced Payment Scheduling

CLICK accepts payments via Credit Cards, Debit Cards, Bank accounts etc, giving customer flexibility to choose the payment mode most convenient to him. CLICK also includes full payment facilities including recurring and automated payment functionality. The application manages all scheduling, transactions and business logic for multiple payment vehicles.

• Support for Web, IVR and Call Center Payments

With CLICK organizations can accept payments regardless of the channel via Web and IVR self-service channels, or via the assisted call center channel. Furthermore, CLICK tightly integrates all channels so payment transactions are consistent among all systems regardless of the channel used. For example, a payment executed via the IVR system is immediately reflected in the system so customers and customer support personnel can instantly log-in to the online system and see the account updates.

• Notifications and Alerts

E-mails and messaging alerts notify customers about payment events and updates. In addition, customers can configure and manage personalized alerts such as when a payment posts, a credit card has expired or recurring payment reminders or upcoming scheduled events.

• Volume and Cross Product Discounts

Our product calculates volume discounts based on customers aggregate usage and also applies discounts based on specific groupings of products / services, giving organizations flexibility for managing discounts and adjustments.

• Accounts Receivable Reconcilliation

We also reconcile all the invoices for accounting, auditing and sales purposes, achieving near 100% billing accuracy

Benefits

• Reduced Load on operational systems and Timely Billing

 CLICK offloads the entire bill processing and delivery process to its own web server, reducing the load on operational systems. It assures timely statement processing and delivery, even if the source systems are experiencing down times.

• Auditing and Statement Error Handling

CLICK takes care of source data errors as well as performs audit checks for summarized statements and their detailed transactions. It prevents revenue leakage for organizations resulting in increased profits. CLICK incorporates extensive reporting and auditing functionality to enable corporate treasury and cash management personnel to understand, track and trouble-shoot all customer transactions. CLICK’s intuitive and comprehensive web interface makes it simple to reconcile remittance information, manage exceptions and do cash flow analysis.

• The Opportunity to up sell and cross sell

More and more companies are using their corporate websites to market goods and services from their product portfolios to their client base. In fact CLICK has facilitated the expansion of product and service portfolios at a pace never seen before. However, in order to make this approach effective, one of the key challenges organizations face is encouraging clients to visit and use the sites regularly.

Using CLICK for a strategic e.Billing solution opens up the opportunity to facilitate these requirements fully. With CLICK at the heart of your e.Billing solution, together with sound integration with the latest application server, personalization and content management technologies, the enormously powerful up sell and cross sell machine of an e. Business website can be realized and mobilized. CLICK facilitates the ability to embed in the bill, personalized purchase offers based on the company’s specific profile - offers that the user can click on whilst within the bill itself.

• One-to-One Marketing

Most modern day marketing experts will speak fondly of the ability to market "one-to- one". The opportunity to market to each client individually, offering unique propositions based on a captured history preference, is highly desirable. In fact in an environment where the number of customers may be in hundreds of thousands, the ability to personalize the information provided is a necessity.

CLICK’s – Power and Speed Statements, are implemented using leading edge technology, offering key information to the correct person at the right time in the right format.

• Prompt Payment and Reduced Payment Turnaround Times

The statements are available earlier than a hard copy paper statement. The user is empowered to address any queries weeks earlier than he might normally have them addressed. The statement is also integrated with the payment process. This speeds up the process of bill payment, reduces the effort and variability of the payment cycle and reduces the risk associated with payment.

Potential return on investment (ROI) is measurable and immediate. Effective use of CLICK’s e.Billing enables large organizations to administer their cost allocation better.

• No bill production and posting

The costs associated with paper based, and physically mailed posted bills are not insignificant and are well understood by the modern organizations. Today almost every opportunity to reduce or even eradicate costs is highly desirable as reductions in cost can be passed on to the client – enabling cost-based competition.

• Customer Self Service

It is in the interest of both the organization and the customer to encourage as much account self-service as possible. Large companies can benefit from this model as it greatly reduces their costs.

• No End User Training

Our product requires no end user training and zero installation of software on the client’s desktop system, it works from a simple browser

• Call Centre - Enhanced Services Online

The call centre also has access to customer’s bills, personal profile, disputes, complaints etc online, making it easy for them to perform analysis on the bills and answer customer queries quickly. CRM executives can also take requests for duplicate bills, itemized bills, ado printing etc

• Robust Platform Offering Solution with enhanced Flexibility

CLICK is a robust product, and scales to large number of users. It performs efficiently even with increased number of users and utilizes the full power of CPU’s installed on the servers. It provides speed and flexibility for incorporating any kind of business-required changes thus reducing time to market for new products and services.

• Greater Administrative Efficiency and Lower Cost