Invoice Production Critical to Customer Relations and Bottom Line

Typically, providers view invoice production as part of their back-office processes. It is not glamorous, but necessary to ensure cash flow. Yet there is more to the invoice than most people even think about. Those touring an automated document factory (ADF) often say, “Wow, who knew this much went into invoice production?”

Processing the Invoice
Essentially an ADF integrates manufacturing-type quality controls into managing, configuring and monitoring invoice production at the piece level. Every step from invoice design to the temperature in the print environment is factored into producing an invoice that will strengthen businesses and improve customer satisfaction. The ADF has numerous validation and error-checking steps in place so that if there is an issue at any point of the process, the system automatically generates a flag that is logged and the print job is suspended until the issue is cleared. It is this attention to detail that ensures that invoices are in the mail accurately and quickly to expedite the payment process.

Document Development and Color
An end-to-end invoicing philosophy begins with invoice design. Better document readability and powerful marketing messages create an effective invoice. To get there, an abundance of business logic is built into the design. For example, piece tracking and intelligent inserting require bar coding and scanning technology such as 3-of-9 bar coding for each invoice. Questions such as whether the remittance stub is on the top or bottom or whether the invoice should be redesigned to reduce pages become critical points of focus. Will the design incorporate a message area where the provider can communicate with customers? Is it necessary to have a “How to Read Your Bill” section on the second page? These are all important questions to consider when designing an invoice.

Since the invoice is typically a provider’s most frequently read customer communication, the design needs to incorporate an area for marketing products, services and company information. The invoice reflects a company’s image and increases customer comprehension, which ultimately reduces churn and call center activity. Selective messaging increases the marketing power of the invoice. The best use of the marketing area is using one-to one marketing messages and graphics in this space.

Another aspect of effective document design is to consider whether the document is color-appropriate, meaning that color is used to drive the customer’s attention to important information on the document. When it comes to color, it’s best to remember that too much of a good thing can be detrimental. It’s easy to overuse color, which in turn minimizes its impact for the customer.

Postal Considerations
Postal expenses account for 60 percent of the total cost of invoice production, therefore it is critical to be consistently up to date with the latest postal regulations and employ the latest pre-sorting and address hygiene software, in order to achieve the maximum pre-sort discounts. The combination of bar coding and pre-sorting leads to the greatest discounts, because it leaves minimal work for the U.S. Postal Service.

Business-to-business providers need other postal options, as some corporate accounts have invoices that are hundreds of pages. Mailing boxed packages has been relatively unchanged for several years, but postal regulations coming in 2007 will change the way these invoices are mailed. The Postal Service will be drastically increasing postage on “flats” and oversized mail by moving to a system based on shape and weight.

Output Types
Print-and-mail is still the most popular invoicing method today, but as the face of the telecom customer base evolves, providers need to be prepared to advance their billing methods. Electronic delivery and electronic bill presentment and payment (EBPP) will become the more accepted channels for bill delivery in years to come.

To support electronic applications, it is necessary to create images of each invoice during the processing phase. A PDF file of each image can be created and a provider can archive this image for customer service support and/or e-billing purposes, thus offering a multi-channel output and giving providers more options in the way they deliver invoices.

Examining Printer Technology
Because printers are essential components of the ADF workflow, the chosen printer must meet several criteria. For example, print quality, output efficiency, workflow recovery ability and scalability are all involved in the decision process. There are many printer options available today, but the best quality choice in the transactional print business remains laser printers.

As print technology evolves, of course, the quality improves and capabilities increase. But the main objective is to keep the price per “click” at a reasonable level for the customer while offering a transactional document with the highest possible quality. With an invoice, it is most important to be effective. As discussed earlier, color can create great images, but if used improperly on the transactional document it can also distract the customer’s focus away from important information. It is important to use color to draw attention to payment options, due dates and amounts. Color capability is one of the biggest factors in the cost of a specific printer technology, so there is no sense in adding to the cost of invoice production if the expensive new capabilities aren’t going to make the invoice any more effective.

Inserting equipment is another critical piece of the ADF equation. In order to maintain piece integrity and one-to-one communication with the customer, intelligent inserting is often used. These machines read the bar coded information as the document literally flies through the machine and inserts marketing materials and return envelopes selectively into the invoice package. As each piece is assembled, a camera snaps a picture of each envelope and identifies and tracks that piece back to the initial file submitted for production. The inserter also creates finished trays of mail in pre-sort order that is ready for postal delivery, once again helping to reduce postal costs.

What Does This Mean for Providers?
For a service provider, these technology issues become relevant when choosing a bill presentment vendor. From a technology point of view, it is critical for the vendor to demonstrate a highly efficient process that utilizes updated technology in a way that minimizes cost and delivers appropriate capabilities—such as color—for invoice production. From a business point of view, the bill presentment vendor must demonstrate that it can produce an effective and distinct invoice design that delivers both communication and marketing opportunities directly on the invoice itself. Customers are being bombarded by marketing messages at all times. The ability to take advantage of the brief amount of time a customer spends actually looking at the bill is perhaps the most important capability a service provider should expect from its bill presentment vendor.

Rich Hoffman is Vice President of Operations and Technical Services at OSG Billing Services. He can be reached at rich.h@osgbilling.com.