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iBilling from EDS aims to ease pain of bill paying
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August 12, 1998 by James Niccolai |
From...
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(IDG) -- Receiving a bill is rarely a joyous moment, but Electronic Data Systems (EDS) says it will make the experience a more positive one with new Web-based billing software that its Electronic Business unit is introducing this week.
Interactive Billing Services (or iBilling, for short) will allow businesses and consumers to receive bills electronically via the World Wide Web, research current and past bills, and instantly e-mail questions to a service representative at the billing company, said EDS officials, who discussed the offering Monday in a conference call with the press.
iBilling will also allow customers to set up automatic payment options, pay bills, and explore the content of statements using a search engine, the officials said.
EDS expects its software and services package to take off most quickly among communications providers and credit card and utilities companies, but the offering is designed to be used by all industry segments, the company officials said.
"For large business-to-business bills that run for several hundred pages, you need to break it into logical pieces and navigate through it. With iBilling it's billed more like a software application than a written statement," said Dan Twing, director of EDS' Electronic Business unit.
About 1,000 U.S. businesses later this year will be among the first to be given the option of using iBilling, thanks to a contract EDS says it has secured with a "very large" telecommunications provider, which it declined to name. That provider plans to offer the billing option to consumers in the future, EDS said.
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Businesses wanting to offer iBilling don't have to change customer billing data into a different format, EDS said. The company takes the data as a print stream in AFP, metacode, or line data format, or as an electronic extract in EDI or flat-file format. EDS then maps, translates, and loads the data into an iBilling server where it can be accessed by customers, the company said.
With the help of EDS, companies can build branded Web sites where customers retrieve and pay their bills electronically. EDS will also provide an e-mail service notifying customers their bills are ready for payment, which includes a link that takes customers to the biller's iBilling Web site.
EDS refused to offer any pricing details Monday. The cost of implementing iBilling varies greatly depending on the complexity of a company's existing billing system and the amount of systems integration work EDS must do to get the customer up and running, the officials said.
"There are implementation fees that assist billers in getting online, and then there are ongoing fees that are very favorable compared to current billing costs," Twing said.
Companies that offer iBilling will save money on paper and distribution costs, and will cut down the time it takes to receive and process a payment by three to six days, according to Twing.
Company officials said iBilling will not compete head-to-head with other electronic payment software offered by CheckFree and MSFDC, the joint venture between Microsoft and First Data Corp.
Instead, EDS customers could use iBilling to enhance those payment services by offering it as a link from a CheckFree or MSFDC payment site, officials said.
iBilling will initially be offered in the United States, where the company hopes to build up service models through its experiences with customers here. The service will be offered overseas in time, starting in countries that have a decimal-denominated currency and where English is widely used, EDS said.