Digital Document Delivery:
Secure, Convenient and Cost Effective

by Scott Gerschwer
Manager of Media Relations
Pitney Bowes Document Messaging Technologies

Seen chiefly as a way to reduce handling costs and provide added convenience to customers, security issues may drive digital presentment to the type of growth that industry analysts first predicted when it was dubbed the Internet's next "killer app" in the late nineties. Billers seeking advice on how to electronically supplement hard copy distribution of their mission critical documents including invoices, bills and statements have come to the right place--the Pitney Bowes Home Page.

Backgrounder
Pitney Bowes, a $4 billion global provider of integrated mail, messaging and document management solutions, serves over 2 million businesses of all sizes through dealer and direct operations. Pitney Bowes Document Messaging Technologies (DMT) has been involved in the print and mailing of hard copy bills for quite some time and is currently the leader in the production mailing systems market. DMT began hosting EBPP and providing integration services in 1998 before forming Pitney Bowes in February 2000 to be a licensed reseller and integration partner of Alysis Workout Technology (which got into the EBPP space with the purchase of @work in 1999). Pitney Bowes acquired Alysis in May, 2001and is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Pitney Bowes, Inc.

Hosted or Licensed?
Pitney Bowes offers Digital Document Delivery (D3) in either a packaged license or as a hosted Application Service Provider (ASP) version and allows users to migrate from the hosted environment to in-house when ready.

Leading Edge Technology
Pitney Bowes made the investment in D3 (formerly WorkOut) because unlike many other vendors who use only JSP functionality and still have back-ends built in C or C++, D3 is developed in 100 percent Java. D3 leverages the Java2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) for production strength server-side applications and Extensible Markup Language (XML) for document storage, processing and distribution. The XML data format allows the presentation of data in HTML as well as other proprietary formats. Use of XML allows for flexible storage and advanced analysis of statement information. Data can be filtered, sorted, analyzed and customized by each user. For less complex statements, data is split into individual statements and stored as XML objects in an archive file. Data is indexed in a relational database. For more complex business-to-business files, data is stored in linked XML objects and a reporting table is created in a relational database. For example, a large telecommunications company might need to report by department and cost center within departments.

D3 is designed as a component-based EBPP solution. The D3 Core System provides all standard e-billing functionality such as data acquisition, enrollment, notification, presentment, payment, one-to-one marketing, customer service, administration and reporting. Options include a CheckFree interface option, site templates, ACH payment options, and XML filers for loading preformatted data into the D3 repository. Customization can be done to any one of these modules.

Business-to-business functionality includes Advanced Data Management, Dispute Management, Workflow, and Advanced User Management, all available as options.

Architecture
Because D3 is written in 100 percent Java, it is able to leverage the full capabilities of application servers such as IBM Websphere and BEA Weblogic. Thus Pitney Bowes is able to take full advantage of the EJB API for application servers. This aspect of D3 provides a high degree of compatibility with organizations that have made a strategic commitment to Java, EJB and applications servers that support the J2EE standards.

Presentment
D3 automatically notifies customers via e-mail based on "events." Standard notification events include the availability of statements, payment status, workflow changes and over 40 other events types. The notification can contain summary and/or detailed statement information with hot links to a web page with detailed data. In addition to notification events, the system can automatically send email "reminders" based on conditions as opposed to events. For example, a conditional reminder can be sent when a bill is approaching its due date and has not yet been viewed by the customer.

Single sign-on within an application server environment integrates D3 with an organizations' use authentication system. User management enables either the biller's customer account managers or super users within an organization to setup and manage the permissions and access privileges of users within that organization.

The one-to-one marketing feature enables non-technical marketing staff to utilize a Web browser to visually create sophisticated rules for dynamic display of ads and inserts on bills.

Payment
D3 provides an extremely flexible payment support infrastructure that allows us to process payments on four continents (Europe, Africa, Australia, North America). In the United States, we have readily available ACH and credit card options. Dispute management processing capabilities are also included. Rules based workflow allows for routing and approvals and adjustments. E-mail notifications can also be sent. Pitney Bowes has integrated with Fleet and Mellon at customers' requests along with the Pitney Bowes Bank. By leveraging D3's plug-in payment architecture, Pitney Bowes also has experience with international payments and supports local payment switches in various countries, such as the BACS interface in the United Kingdom. D3 works in conjunction with PitneyPay, a comprehensive Internet payment solution that facilitates ACH Debited payment, escrow, or any combination of payment/escrow to securely execute payments online. PitneyPay is capable of dispensing simultaneous payments to multiple vendors associated with the transaction through its web-based integrated payment routing system.

ERP Integration
Pitney Bowes also allows customers to extend the payment EJB to add new features such as updating an ERP system in real-time. For example, a standard EJB based application could utilize an EJB connector to interface to a SAP application. Since all D3 processes run on standard EJB transactions supported by the commercial application server, customized processing can be wrapped in the same transaction as standard transactions that come standard with the D3 product. For example, a standard D3 payment transaction can be wrapped with a customized update to an ERP system. If the customer-specific update to an ERP system fails after a payment has been made, the application server will automatically roll the payment back. This capability to easily mix and match shrink-wrapped and customized business logic provides a high level of flexibility.

Experience
Pitney Bowes as a company has vast experience with very large print billers and has quality control setup for very large bills. Pitney Bowes can leverage StreamWeaver installations and deliver XML data streams for electronic presentment easily. Pitney Bowes' StreamWeaver can provide print stream suppression, which some other EBPP vendors cannot do. Pitney Bowes has a better understanding of the document production world than most of its' competitors.

To find out more about D3, call 877-536-2736 and ask for D3 Sales.