Rapid Roi
There are four powerful business drivers, combined with our Software as a Service (SaaS) model, that allow our clients to achieve full Return On Investment in less than 12 months.
Striata business drivers for fast ROI:
- Paper turn off – The biggest impact that Electronic Bill Presentment has on any organization is that of significant, instant and measurable cost reduction
- Personalized, targeted marketing – One of the key advantages of an electronic bill delivery solution is the personalized marketing opportunity
- Quicker electronic payment and response – Sophisticated technology enables both electronic payment and form submission from within our secure electronic documents
- Decreased customer service calls – Using predictive electronic bills to reduce inbound contact center volume and costs
The majority of our high volume financial services and biller clients enjoy six to nine month ROIs and massive, continuous project profitability thereafter
1. Paper turn off
The biggest impact that Electronic Bill Presentment has on any organization 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 so compelling that it is often unnecessary to measure or include these in ROI workings.
2. The power of personalized email bill marketing
For the majority (65% to 80%) of customers, a biller’s only touch point with them is the monthly bill / statement.
Inserting marketing material into paper bill envelopes is expensive and challenging. Response rates have also been declining to a point where they are now negligible.
One of the key advantages of an electronic bill delivery solution is the personalized marketing opportunity. Due to the very nature of this billing medium, companies are able to store a range of marketing messages and apply these to the delivered electronic bill, allowing for the recipient to receive fully personalized, targeted and relevant messages. Furthermore, the eBill has new, marketing ‘real-estate’ that is many more times effective than a bill stuffer.
The largest advantage however, is that these marketing opportunities can be harnessed at almost no cost at all.
3. Quicker electronic payment and response
There are typically two response types:
- Electronic Payment: Receiving payments electronically is a meaningful requirement for all electronic billing initiatives. Whilst almost all the cost savings are gained from the presentment side of the equation, there are many reasons why electronic payment is very desirable. These include dramatically quicker payment activity and reduced DSO (Days Sales Outstanding), total reduction in expensive lockbox exceptions and dramatically improved reoccurring payment adoption.
- Form completion and submission: Using the electronic bill as the platform, this solution is particularly cost effective in updating customer records and taking manual intervention out of any form completion requirement. Pre-populated forms can be appended to the eBill for customer completion and submission with just a single click.
4. Decreased customer service calls
The Striata advantage: using predictive electronic bills to reduce contact center inbound contact center volume and costs.
An area of considerable expense to the majority of consumer-facing companies is inbound calls. Analysis shows costs ranging between $4.00 and $12.00 per call, depending on the industry and whether calls are handled domestically or outsourced to lower cost geographies. Billing continues to be the largest source of consumer calls to any contact center. Customers want bills that are easy to understand and help them make informed choices on usage, cost control and supplier. They want it to be clear when bills have exceptional charges and what these charges were for. And they want to know that the information shown on their bills is identical to that on-screen at the call center, so complaints can be handled with less confusion.
Customers want the ability to handle the majority of their queries on their own. This is where new developments in software can have a significant impact. Technology can enable the design and delivery of intelligent electronic bills which specifically address the most commonly asked questions in any call center. Many of the features available in an electronic bill are simply not possible on a printed bill, particularly as rising postage costs are often offset by reducing the number of printed pages and printing in a single color ink. What is more, electronic bills can include images and sophisticated, interactive graphics. Charts might show consumption patterns or comparison data, such as tracking individual usage against industry averages. The bills can include personalized marketing and the corporate image can be maintained by including full color logos and even Flash animation.
Electronic bill layout can be simplified by offering layers of information, allowing the customer to drill down to the level of detail appropriate to them. In the world of print and paper, the traditional bill had to be all things to all customers, resulting in either an overly complex bill, or a bill which generated too many inbound queries. Customers expect to be important to their service providers. They demand unfailing access to the information they need, when and where they need it. Service providers have to be a step ahead and provide the tools necessary for customers to answer their own questions, without presenting unnecessary information.
By using creative bill designs and predictive customer service, which have been refined over many years, our solution helps to reduce inbound call volume and costs, increases customer loyalty and reduces churn.
Consumers enjoy receiving Striata emails. They provide real value in the form of meaningful, easy-to-understand billing information. The eStatements are easy to decrypt, using information easily remembered and without the need to log into a web portal. This opens the doorway to further electronic communication with consumers, which serves to drive loyalty, improve retention and increase sales. Striata eStatements not only reduce the cost of paper-based billing, but can assist in proactively reducing the number of inbound bill related queries. These savings alone often outstrip savings made by eliminating paper statements.
With our purpose-built technology and more than a decade of experience in sending billions of electronic documents for large corporations, Striata is the logical choice for any supplier wanting to achieve significant paper switch-off and predictive customer service.
