This chapter provides a summation of the findings of the Report.

This report was originally commissioned by six software, systems integration, and technology companies. We launched our investigation in early 1999 with the goal to:

  - Analyze the opportunities for selling EBPP Systems to telecom carriers;

  - Quantify the market and forecast revenues forecasts for various market segments; and,

  - Profile the products and services as well as the strategic directions of key EBPP solution suppliers.

Surveying 103 telecom carrier and vendor marketing  executives overall, we gathered our research data using a proven combination of structured questionnaires, face-to-face interviews, plus in-depth telephone discussions.

Telecom service providers know that monthly bills are their most reliable means of customer communications. Unlike other customer-contact vehicles-media advertising or telemarketing, for example-the monthly bill will be received...will be read... and will generate a response.

Because of its phenomenal -- and inevitable -- reach, billing really does offer service providers the most bang for the customer-relations buck.

Net zealots will tell you: "Either your business has a dynamic electronic interface with your customers ... or you don't have a business." Those are strong, even arrogant words. But these wired evangelists back up their prophecies with every day "proof" - in the stock market, in the business pages, and in virtually every part of our society. So ignore them at your peril. 

 It's more than a trend - it's a cultural and social tidal wave. All phases of our lives are being inundated with products and services designed to save time. And whether you see these tools as life-enhancers or as pressure-builders, they're going to keep coming at you.

This is the larger context in which e-billing must be seen and evaluated. And the third chapter of our Report, E-Billing Technology & Processes, begins by placing electronic billing in historical context, replacing its mystery with useful perspective...

Yes, the ability to pay our bills with the click of a mouse button comes courtesy of the internet.  But EBPP started way before the Web was born: Its roots reach back to 1974, when the National Automated Clearing House Association was founded, to allow America's financial network to easily handle fund transfers and bank payments. That led to the automated clearing house (ACH) network - which now moves trillions of dollars electronically each year.

Direct payroll deposits, ATMs, and point-of-sale card swipes are all examples of the relentless push to re-place paper transactions with electronic convenience.

Seen in this context, it's fairly easy to see why a good share of the 21 billion paper bills that are mailed out to American consumers each year will eventually fade into the sunset.

As you'll see, TRI estimates that companies are spending more than $18 billion annually on this cross-country paperwork shuffle - at between $0.42 and $3.10 per bill!

EBPP empowers big billers to reduce much of this overhead of postage and printing.

E-Billing Technology & Processes provides a firm grounding on the core issues adopters must be familiar with...

 • Learn the technology's capabilities:
Registering and activating new accounts... finding and retrieving stored bill data... bill design and presentment... how information is sent down-stream to customers and consolidators and upstream to accounts receivable and financial institutions... how it can include a wide array of customer service features. What are the mechanics that enable all this potential? E-Billing Technology & Processes tells you.

 • Understand EBPP's complex effect on customer care:
The driving force behind EBPP is-orshould be-more than cost-savings: it represents a gem of an opportunity to build and foster customer relationships. The opportunities are boundless... but the risks are real. Here's where you'll learn why both the excitement and the worry are warranted - and where your eyes should be trained to ensure that your EBPP solution will be a business builder.

 • Web security - learning from the enemy:
Much is made of web security. How much should itworry you? As you'll learn, the actual damage wrought by hackers and crackers is mostly cosmetic - but they can lead to the kind of serious PR problems that keeps carriers up at night. The web is full of recipes for would-be hackers - and the IT community feasts on this information as it formulates ways to fix security holes. This security, and encryption tools you'll discover in E-Billing Technology & Processes,  point to a far more secure future for electronic billing.

TRI believes that showing is every bit as effective as telling. To that end, E-Billing Technology & Processes concludes with an array of detailed charts that clearly present the data used to formulate the chapter's conclusions.

Plus, we provide a selection of screen shots taken straight from the Web that illustrate how telcos are presenting their bills

 It offers tremendous cost-savings potential. It can connect you with your customer like nothing before it. It can bring in revenue instantly... rather than waiting days or weeks. And you've almost got to do it... or risk being left to wallow in the backwater.

So what's the holdup? Chapter 4 of our Report explains...

Telco Requirements, Drivers & Obstacles digs deep as it examines the forces that are playing on the decision makers at telcos as they contemplate jumping into e-billing.

By learning how businesses are prioritizing and attacking issues surrounding EBPP deployment, you'll be better able to define and resolve your own concerns. And that's true whether you're a carrier or a vendor providing technology and services to the industry.

This chapter of TRI's report reveals how carrier executives - key players in all facets of the e-bill movement - are trying to reconcile what they see as an absolutely inevitable part of the future with the very real demands and distractions of the present.

As you'll learn, the root of the industry's hesitancy is, not unsurprisingly, money. Theoretically, EBPP's cost-saving potential is undeniable. But until the cost of deploying a system is proven to be less than the financial rewards it brings - there's going to be a lot of foot dragging. Here are just a few of the pros and cons telcos are juggling as they decide whether and when to embrace EBPP...

 • The future looks good-but human nature could get in the way: TRI found that in a few short years, telcos expect more than half of their customers to use on-line bill payment. But they're unsure at what time to jump headlong into that future. And what about the float reduction EBPPpromises? If billers are to get their revenues as quickly as e-billing promises, customers willhave to pay expeditiously. After all, if paper bills let customers wait until the 11th hour, won't EBPP allow them to wait until the 59th minute of that same hour? The prevailing wisdom? Find out in Telco Requirements, Drivers & Obstacles.

 • The fear of being left behind: If imprudent expenditure on EBPP is the main worry, TRI foundthat telcos' worry about eating their competitors' dust comes in a close second. Electronic BillPresentment & Payment Systems in Telecommunications closely examines the strong peer pressure at work in the industry.

• Who's spending what? Aside from big players like AT&T and BellSouth, heavy expenditureson marketing consumer EBPP services just haven't been happening. You'll be interested to learn how much our polled companies are willing to spend on their electronic billing pilots and what they expect to get for their outlay.

This reluctance to spend money means that many telcos are looking for off-the-shelf solutions. There's certainly no shortage of them, and Telco Requirements, Drivers & Obstacles leads you through the maze of offerings, spotlighting companies and describing their qualifications and solutions.

And where does all this leave systems integrators? Are they being shut out? If so, when will the doors open? TRI's Report looks into the inevitable involvement of systems integrators with EBPP. As you'll learn, their interest in e-billing is intense. And their expertise is growing.

This chapter concludes with an array of statistic-rich charts that allow you to see at a glance...

 • Exactly where money is being spent on EBPP software;

 • The specific obstacles that wireline, convergence, wireless, and ILEC service providers are grappling with;

• Detailed market forecasts for e-billing customer acceptance;

 • The specific issues that most concern telcos when contemplating customer self-service on the Net,

• The types of suppliers playing critical roles in the design of EBPP solutions;

• And much more.

All in all, this discussion of the benefits and drawbacks of e-billing involvement will greatly assist you in sorting out exactly where your firm stands in this developing story. And the informational charts- developed with the input of over a hundred industry respondents across the country-make sure that your assessment is in tune with the real world.

 When the time comes to move beyond a pilot project and get serious about installing an EBPP system, telcos need to harness expertise in disciplines such as e-bill formatting, production, customer care, remittance processing, bill storage, e-bill customer-interface design, and others.

Outsourcing all these e-billing services can offer three advantages...

 • Faster time to market

• Lower up-front costs

 • Lower risk of investing in quickly outdated technology

 And then there's the question of consolidation. One of e-billing's most desirable conveniences for customers is its promise that they can pay all their recurring bills in a few clicks of the mouse button.

 Chapter 5, E-Bill Service Bureaus & Consolidators, introduces you to the many resources carriers can call on to help them establish a fully integrated EBPP presence on the Web.

• It's a whole new production: Producing statements for the Web means working in a differentlanguage-HTML or PDF rather than native print stream-but there's considerable motivation for traditional printers to pick up the translation process. If one or two carriers support their bill printer to develop e-billing capabilities, the printer can deploy the developed EBPP system to all its other clients. That's cost-effectiveness. And it's often the impetus for partnering-with production system vendors, print formatters, and print and mail software specialists such as Elixir Technologies, and ISIS Papyrus. Partnering matrixes are being formed throughout the EBPP universe.

 • The garden of EBPP service-bureaus: The big names like Checkfree and Transpoint offer awide portfolio of services-including remittance processing and bill consolidation-and go after the Fortune 100 companies. But a whole new crop of smaller "cyberbiller" service bureaus is starting to sprout. And they're targeting the companies that the bigger boys are letting slip through the cracks. E-Bill Service Bureaus & Consolidators describes the services and flexibility these new kids on the block are offering to pull in clients.

At the end of the day, telcos must decide whether the convenience and relative low cost of outsourcing out-weigh the inherent disadvantages of taking the EBPP solution out of house. After reading Chapter 5 of TRI's Report, you'll have a clear sense of the myriad vendors and their services that have entered the EBPP space.

 That knowledge, in turn, gives you a firm grasp of the ingredients necessary for any in-house solution you may be contemplating.

The chapter  concludes with an array of charts that illustrate which types of consolidators are currently in favor with carriers. Among the many figures at the end of this chapter are those that show you the relative popularity of in-house vs. out-of-house bill production, the most widely used statement producers, and the market share they enjoy.

 Getting the statement to the customer using on-line media is the issue that gets all the press. But the other half of the equation-receiving and processing the payment-is really more important: A reliable electronic remittance process is the do-or-die ingredient for e-billing's successful future.

After all, this is where the money comes in.

Like the paper-billing process itself, carrier remittance has a long development history, processing millions of bills each month has evolved remittance into a finely tuned art form. Automatic letter opening machines... high-speed canners...  handwriting recognition soft-ware- with EBPP all these refined tools go out the window.

Bill Payments & Remittance Processing examines this new reality, looking at the issues that must be faced and resolved if e-billing is to deliver on its promise:

• Outsourcing remittance-easy as it sounds? It sounds so simple... your customer clicks the "pay" button on your web site, and a remittance processor like Checkfree or Transpoint takes over from there.  The money sails from your client's account into yours, and a copy of the transaction is sent to accounts receivable. But there's a sticking point: many banks and accounts receivable departments are still mired in paper business processes. TRI's Report outlines just how formidable this obstacle really is.

• The 80/20 Rule and why it should worry you: 20% of remittances contain problems that eat up 80% of an account receivables department's labor cost. People manually solve these anomalies using the information-rich payment stub. E-billing doesn't use payment stubs. See the difficulty? Learn how e-remittance processing is working to minimize the problem and why nipping it in the bud is so crucial to customer relations.

 • Learn the payment options your customers will expect: Bill payment by credit card and recurring direct debit are two alternate remittance vehicles to checking, both of which are gaining in popularity. Each has advantages. Each has drawbacks and unique complexities. The more you know about them now, the more confident you'll be when deciding which to offer your customers. Chapter 6, Bill Payments & Remittance Processing shows you how they work.

 TRI's Report also looks toward up-and-coming financial technology initiatives, such as the Bank Internet Payment System (BIPS) and the eCheck initiative. These and other ambitious projects ensure that remittance over the Internet will continue to be a huge and rapidly changing issue. TRI's Electronic Bill Presentment & Payment Systems in Telecommunications brings you the latest thinking on these issues.

On-line billing not only creates new problems for telecom companies... it also provides different twists on old responsibilities. Like bill storage.

 Nowadays, when a customer calls up a service rep, he expects the rep to know his billing history stretching back for a year or more.

 For large carriers this means adding gigabytes of billing information to storage each month.

Customers will expect this same access to billing information when they begin using the on-line interface. This potentially creates a big architectural task for carriers moving to EBPP.

 Chapter 7, E-Bill Storage & Databases, looks at your alternatives and the issues that should factor into your decision-making. Plus, it clearly points out the different set of problems facing small versus large carriers...

 • Is a dedicated e-billing storage system the answer? For carriers, creating new storage and data-bases just for EBPP is tempting, because it removes the headache of disrupting legacy systems. But what about data synchronization with legacy systems? That's absolutely necessary. And any adjustment made on the EBPP storage system must show up on older billing records. TRI's Report looks at all the repercussions of a storage solution dedicated to on-line billing.

 • Is an integrated system really worth the extra cost? Of course, if a carrier merges legacy storage with a new EBPP system, it'll have identical records that can be accessed by both CSRs and on-line customers. That's easy to contemplate- but hard to do. This much is clear- more money and more complexity will be on the table.

 • Will COLD become hot? Computer-output-to-laser-disk storage (COLD) is vying to muscle in on bill storage. COLD vendors use highly flexible, algorithm-driven software that can be applied wherever high-volume storage is needed. Many leading suppliers of EBPP software-companies like Mobius Management, edocs, and Adesso Software-have backgrounds in writing software that works with COLD storage. E-Bill Storage & Databases gives you a good grounding in this technology, and the expertise this group of vendors brings to the table.

Market Analysis & Recommendations is essentially an Action Plan for those companies who want to "get a piece of the action" of the fast-growing EBPP market.

 Remember when telephone "operators" routed calls  for customers? Rotary phones closed down those switchboards. Consumers became their own "operators." And carriers saved a bundle of money. The Net offers cost-cutting opportunities on a much grander scale. When employee-intensive support systems are replaced by automated, E-based sites where customers take care of themselves, carriers will realize tremendous cost savings.

 There's huge incentive for carriers to explore EBPP solutions. And there are equally pressing incentives for vendors who would help them implement these solutions. Market Analysis & Recommendations is where these vendors can look for helpful and specific guidance...

 • EBPP software vendors: Because e-billing is one of the Next Big Things in our wired world, there's naturally been a proliferation of firms bent on tapping into this market. TRI's Report  provides on-target suggestions-gleaned from in-depth research with the telcos themselves - on how best to differentiate your company in this competitive environment. Who should you target? How should you tailor your solutions for maximum marketability? Partnering is a big piece of the EBPP puzzle-we'll show you where to choose your comrades. How do you establish credibility in an industry that's been so frequently burned by soft-ware vendor over promising? Market Analysis & Recommendations addresses all these questions - and many more.

 • Systems integrators: Any vendor considering selling an e-billing solution to carriers had better listen long and hard to what integrators have to offer. In a nutshell, it's the integrators who make sure all the fancy tools of the electronic interface are accurate, reliable, and scalable. In other words-that they work. Integrators have been dealing with legacy issues for years, and this expertise has never been more urgently needed than in e-billing. In short, this is a fertile market for integrators. And again, by proper partnering, EBPP solution vendors have great opportunities to accelerate ramp-up.

 • EBPP Service Bureaus: TRI found that carriers want to turn to their service bureau for e-bill presentment solutions-but few offer them. But those bureaus that already have printing capabilities - such as ALLTEL Information Systems, CSG Systems, and DST Innovis - should be able to make the move to e-bill presentment with ease.

• Consolidators: This is the real dark horse of e-billing. Those who manage to concentrate a critical mass of customer bills on the web can look forward to a busy and highly profitable future, with a steady stream of revenues coming from the billers themselves and from web advertising. But customers will rule out consolidators who haven't already established a strong reserve of consumer trust. With names like AOL, AT&T, Quicken, or MasterCard in the mix, potential consumer confidence is greatly boosted.

The Report's Chapter 8 is where it all comes together. Simply put, this section takes information presented in the Report's previous Chapters and molds it into analysis and recommendations that your organization can act upon. It answers questions such as:

• How will the current telecom IT landscape shape e-billing opportunities?

• How fast will new technology and capabilities be adopted?

• What EBPP products and services show the most promise for the telecom industry?

• How can you best position your solutions to address the priorities and needs of telecom EBPP buyers?

Both carriers and vendors will benefit from a 9 page table in Chapter 8 that segments 85 suppliers into 29 unique vendor categories, commenting on each one's market strengths and future telecom direction. This section should prove ideal when it comes to identifying potential partners or surveying the strengths and weak-nesses of specific vendors.