Moving Customers from the Paper-based World of Bills and Checks into the Digital age?

To encourage customer to adopt an online billing solution of any kind takes careful planning and creativity and there are several “angles” a biller can take in the general promotion of the benefits of the change to e-billing. A few of these are:

1.          The Informational Angle – simply communicating that the new system is available and is easy and quick to use and should be tried –the more you can get the pioneer and early adopter types to make the switch the better-some of these may even provide testimonials to be published on a web site to the rest of the customer base.

2.          The Green Angle – The fact that the new bill presentment and payment system can save paper (and even save water, electricity and fuel) is a powerful reason for many customers to “do their bit” and make own small contribution to the sustainability of the planet.

3.          The Benefits Angle – In the early stages, customers will not be interested long communications about features of a new system (and may even resist any proposed change). However, by focusing on the specific benefits of the new system (such as speed and convenience, or the capacity to save them time and money in an increasingly busy world) this is often more than enough to get them thinking about making the change.

4.          The Rewards Angle – Merchants can offer specific rewards and incentives (points, gifts and prizes etc.) to customers to get them to switch to an electronic billing and payment solution.   

In some cases, a merchant will want to adopt just one of these angles to get customers to start thinking about using an online bill view and payment solution, but it may also be useful to adopt more than one angle or even switch from one to another progressively over time and therefore use all four of the above options. Of course, for the bulk of customers you may need to use the rewards angle (and actively or even aggressively) to get them to take action.

Embracing E-Invoicing -The Barriers vs. Benefits

Two recent surveys (one in the US and one in Europe) have confirmed that 20% of survey  population respondents (on average) were already using a form of e-invoicing, with a further 50% actively evaluating adopting it in the near future.

These two surveys ultimately conclude that the benefits of embracing e-invoicing outweigh the barriers, for most organizations, but suggest that particular barriers will inhibit the time taken to adopt the technology or the time taken for it to become fully utilized. Let’s therefore look at these barriers and benefits in more detail:

The Barriers

The greatest perceived barriers to adopting e-invoicing is current work processes or existing process design around issuing an invoice and getting paid (and the inability to change these processes quickly or effectively). Close behind is the lack of budget to develop or purchase new e-invoicing software, or pay any incremental, up-front costs, even if this led to significant medium to long-term savings. A lack of executive sponsorship is also cited as a commonplace barrier, with the CEO or CFO most commonly expected to be a major driver of adoption in most cases.

Other commonly cited barriers are having insufficient resources to bring in a new approach (mainly people) and the associated lack of time and resources to integrate e-invoicing with current systems or software (especially on the accounting side of things). In addition, lack of awareness about available forward options and possible supplier resistance were also cited as being significant factors.

The Benefits

The greatest perceived benefits to adopting e-invoicing is its capacity to better control the whole billing process much more effectively (at every level and from bill or invoice issue to ultimate payment). This includes the capacity to ensure that invoices were less frequently lost, missing or duplicated. E-invoicing is also expected to reduce billing and payment processing costs significantly and also to decrease payment cycle times. The capacity to also dramatically reduce errors and exceptions is also seen as a significant benefit.

Another major cited benefit of e-invoicing is the capacity for e-invoicing to increase on-time payments (and even accelerate cash-flow) and to increase choice when it comes to invoice payment options and potentially when an invoice can be paid.

What does this mean to those organizations thinking about e-invoicing?

Any organization interested in saving expenses and accelerating cash-flow would be wise to research the e-invoicing options available to them (of which there are several, including cloud-based and “pay-as-you-go” systems (which avoid capital outlays and long integration effort) such as Payswyft, which immediately solve other barriers such as lack of budget and resources and the need for integration time and effort. In addition, the CEO or CFO of an enterprise should ideally act as a project champion, helping his or her organization to evaluate specific options and how particular barriers need to be overcome. In taking these two steps alone, most organizations would smooth the path to embracing e-invoicing and be able to realize the substantial benefits much more quickly (in terms of lowering their own costs and giving their customers a much better payment experience).