Acquisitions, Alliances and
New Capabilities Foster Growth
for Pitney Bowes

by George Linkletter

Businesses are attracted to EBPP and ESP primarily as a way to reduce message-processing costs by eliminating paper and postage expenses. At the same time, EBPP can be a revenue-producing agent, allowing a business to launch personalized or one-to-one marketing campaigns to cross sell products or offer value-added services to lock in customers.

Pitney Bowes Document Messaging Technologies, founded a year ago as a stand-alone business with a mission to help large companies migrate their paper-based billing and statement operations to the web, is plunging ahead on several key fronts this year with the goal to drive EBPP to its long awaited potential.

The first goal is to broaden its capabilities, expand its presence in the marketplace, and help Pitney Bowes "walk the walk" when it comes to electronic billing and e-commerce initiatives.

After one year in existence, Pitney Bowes is a veteran e-billing vendor. The firm has more than a dozen customer sites up and running, including operations in the telecommunications, utilities and health care insurance industries. It operates one of the longest-running sites in the US, on behalf of the United Illuminating Co. in Connecticut. And it runs one of the most robust sites in the world, posting more than 1.2 million electronic statements per month for the Pitney Bowes Postage by Phone.com unit.

Visibility, expertise and simplicity
Plus, it possesses three key sales advantages, the first and most obvious of which is that it's tied to Pitney Bowes. Forrester Research analyst Bob Zurek describes Document Messaging Technologies as being as "entrepreneurial and innovative as any dot com start up--but with a 4 billion dollar security blanket."

Pitney Bowes provides both visibility and financial backing, as exemplified in the recent purchase of Alysis Technologies, Inc. Alysis' cutting-edge WorkOut server, which enables companies to streamline billing, payment, processing, dispute management, workflow and data analysis, is built on XML technology and an Enterprise Java Beans (EJB) platform. WorkOut's architecture is uniquely designed for business-to-business and e-commerce applications and ensures seamless integration and effective handling of high volumes of data.

Industry analysts contend that WorkOut will help drive the utilization of the Pitney Bowes professional services and their entire line-up of data and document-related products. The combination of industry stature, a true web architecture, unique product functionality, and business-to-business market focus gives Document Messaging Technolgoies an edge over other electronic bill presentment and payment (EBPP) companies.

In fact, deep roots in Pitney Bowes high tech production mail unit has already enabled Document Messaging Technologies to build paper-based relationships with roughly 1,300 of the of the world's largest 2000 business enterprises. Adding an e-billing technology that allows statement production applications to be easily altered at the mainframe, without the need to rewrite existing 'legacy' applications or disrupt the production of traditional paper-based bills will be an enormous advantage.

In a press release announcing the acquisition of Alysis, Pitney Bowes CEO Michael J. Critelli, put it succinctly: "Our mission [is] to support our customers' mission-critical mail and document management processes. Increasingly, electronic bills and statements are being recognized as an under utilized opportunity to advance customer relationships. Firms are seeking ways to increase the flexibility of their processes to accommodate customer preferences for web-based self-service, and workflow integration within businesses. Combined, Pitney Bowes and Alysis will answer this need, supporting businesses as they go through the evolution of these critical processes."

Pitney Bowes has also been aggressive in forming partnerships with other leading edge companies, a key strategy in today's business environment. Last August, they were one of the first premier certified partners of CheckFree, which means that Document Messaging Technologies customers will be able to offer consumers the option of viewing and paying bills via CheckFree's extensive network of partners and consumer service providers.

In addition, Document Messaging Technologies expanded it's billing capabilities by purchasing a credit card processing server from CyberSource. This robust, enterprise-wide transaction processing platform manages the authorization and settlement of credit card and other payment transactions in real-time through built-in connections with third-party processors and merchant-acquiring banks.

The fully scalable CyberSource payment solution enables businesses to accept and process payment transactions through multiple enterprise sales channels-Websites, call centers, interactive voice response (IVR) systems, in-store point-of-sale systems and kiosks. The CyberSource server allows Document Messaging Technologies to offer an expanded range of messaging and billing solutions that are as simple, or complex as the customer desires.

The Pitney Bowes postagebyphone.com application is a prime example.

More than one million businesses use the Postage by Phone system, which handles more than $13 billion in postage payments worldwide. But with the launch of postagebyphone.com a year ago, tens of thousands of those users migrated away from the phone and now rely on the speed and convenience of the Internet in an ESP application to help reset meters and assure that adequate postage is available to meet projected needs.

"Our users now have virtually instant access to detailed and historical account data, so they can review and analyze meter use more effectively and manage postage expenses more precisely," says Kathleen Bishop, Director, Postage By Phone.

That initial D3 implementation included only the current and past two months of account activity. But to aid users in budgeting and managing postage costs, the postings have been expanded and will soon encompass a full year of account activity. And since users can make payments on-line as well, the focus has shifted from ESP to EBPP.

Payments via credit card
In fact, the most recent upgrade to the Document Messaging Technologies e-billing capability gives even more convenience to the Postage by Phone service by allowing users to make or schedule payments via a credit card. Processing technology for the credit card payment option is coming from CyberSource, a global provider of e-commerce transaction services. Why a credit card option? Because consumers are already accustomed to purchasing goods and services over the Internet via a credit card, and it allows them to make payments instantly and without the need to establish any on-line banking relationships.

"The whole point of e-billing is to eliminate the need to write checks and address and stuff envelopes," says Karl Schumacher, Vice President, Global Business Strategy and Acquisition. "Allowing a small business operator to make or schedule payments via a credit card does exactly that without any of the intricacies involved in establishing a relationship with an online bank or consolidator, which is a hassle for small businessmen."

Captures more data
The new credit card payment capability is also expected to find favor with invoicers because they'll be able to capture and utilize more detailed data about transactions or purchases to speed reordering and analyze key trends.

"Each credit card payment entry can now include additional details such as specific inventory or SKU numbers," says Schumacher. "That data can allow a vendor to track sales by region or promotional activity, and reorder needed merchandise automatically."

The credit card option can also benefit billers who have customers abroad and want to avoid problems related to exchange rates and currency translation, adds Schumacher.

Plus, the option is ideal for small and medium-sized business customers that want to simplify billing and payment procedures by consolidating expenses and reducing the time and distraction involved in reconciling disbursements from checking accounts.

"Many also use credit cards to manage funds more effectively, or to accumulate airline miles or the points awarded by loyalty programs run by affinity credit cards," explains Schumacher.

"The credit card pay option gives Document Messaging Technologies an extra e-billing capability for a wide range of regular or recurring bills--such as insurance premiums, club memberships, subscription or service agreements, and installment and mortgage loans."

The D3/CyberSource processing capability also offers several advantages that are unseen by either customers or billers but are important nonetheless. Chief among those are speed, flexibility, scalability and cost.

Each credit card transaction requires only two to five seconds to complete, and features a confirmation number, instead of the 45 seconds to a minute that other processing technologies require. Why? The single CyberSource implementation features multiple back-end connections to multiple processors, which affords sufficient fire power for the system to handle 25,000 transactions per hour initially and easily scale up to five million transactions per hour if needed.

Plus, billers can utilize their existing banking relationships, which eases the transition to the credit card option and potentially lowers costs, since the 'direct' processing application offered by CyberSource eliminates the need to enlist the aid of -- and cost for -- a payment gateway to channel the transactions.

As for flexibility, the payment option is easily integrated into existing call center or Integrated Voice Response (IVR) systems to provide access to a seamless and comprehensive customer service capability.

Innovative Uses of e-Billing technology Pitney Bowes also leverages their Professional Services organization to provide unusual uses for their technology. For example, The State of Oregon recently purchased Digital Document Delivery (D3) to utilize print streams or other standard output formats to convert and direct data to the appropriate government agency.

To accomplish this task the state government, working with the Document Messaging Technologies Professional Services team, defined an enrollment database consisting of the State's authorized organizations or departments.

Document Messaging Technologies then uses its StreamWeaver software to make the decision to route transactional data to either print or the electronic medium using the enrollment database for the decision process. D3 then parses the electronically targeted print stream and converts it to XML.

The State of Oregon now has a cost-effective way to leverage the capabilities and cost savings of Electronic Funds Transfer through the ACH. D3 triggers and processes ACH transactions from the banking details contained in the enrollment database. The state utilizes the ACH for direct deposit of payments made to Vendors. It's a reverse on the usual Electronic Bill Presentment and Payment (EBPP) solution in that it triggers a payment rather than a bill. And each state agency gets the right document at the right time in the right place--a real breakthrough, as anyone who's ever worked for the government knows.

All of this may seem a bit ambitious in a nascent industry like e-billing, but Document Messaging Technologies is in the game for the long haul and aims to be the eventual winner, says Karl Schumacher.

An ally in a changing world
"We are the biller's advocate in the fast-changing world of e-commerce," he explains. "We understand the premium that businesses place on customer relationships and we simplify the implementation process so billers can quickly use an electronic messaging and billing capability to achieve their strategic business goals.

"Plus, our strategic partnership agreements, such as those with billing consolidators, consumer service providers and others, allow billers to manage only one vendor relationship and still provide their consumers with a rich and expanding array of delivery and payment options."

Media Contact:
Scott Gerschwer
Manager, Media Relations
203-739-3163
Scott.Gerschwer@pb.com