1. Strategies & Benefits of Integrating Billing and Payment Channels
John Goering
Kathy Norgaard
[John welcomes everyone and introduces himself and outlines that Kathy will be up later in the presentation to facilitate the Q&A portion of the session]

2. economic pressures utility regulations employment taxation fuel prices
regulatory pressures
In today’s fast paced, ever-changing world, the utility industry as a whole faces many challenges which you all well aware of. Challenges such as economic pressures (investor and stakeholder pressures, fuel prices, employment levels), regulatory pressures (such as pricing & competition, taxation & accounting, state & local utility regulations)…the list goes on and on.
In addition to these macro level pressures, the continued pressure of improving your operations efficiency is always top of mind. The continual push for improved efficiency and reduced costs has put a lot of burden on the operations but that same push has driven a lot of industry changes that allow utilities to not only improve efficiency but also increase customer value.

3. Utility Payment Challenges
Business Needs
Technology Needs
Marketplace/Consumer Needs
Within the utility payment arena, the challenges that the organization faces are striking the right balance between:
The marketplace/consumer needs – today’s customers are highly evolved and have a wide ranging level of payment needs. They need more methods of notifications, they need more methods of interacting with you, they need more ways to make a payment.
Business needs – as an organization identifies consumer behavior shifts or changes, that business needs to a) be aware of the shifts and be able to react proactively to them and b) that business also needs to be able to measure and monitor the results of their activity to ensure that the proper resources are working on the right activities
Technology connectivity needs – just as there are more needs for increased notifications, interactions and payment types by the end customer…that means that there will be a down hill impact to the technology environment needs that are placed on an organization.
When these needs are not met and are out of balance, the organization's ability to present and process billing activities in a highly efficient manner are undermined. How many of you have had a customer’s payment come in at the last minute via an electronic payment method but the bill file was already sent to the printer and you weren’t able to suppress that incorrect bill from being mailed? How many of you have had a large number of customer calls where the customer is simply inquiring about past account transaction activities such as…“when did you receive my last payment”? With an integrated billing solution where your bill printing, your paper remittance processing and electronic payment portals are tied together, many of these types of scenarios can be avoided which improves your billing efficiencies and improve your customer’s satisfaction by allowing them to manage their account and receive and/or pay their bills today in the method that most fits their lifestyle.

4. Integrating Billing and Payment Channels
Managing the customer experience
Best practices in managing multiple payment processes
Traditional paper-based
Electronic-based
Mobile-based
Pain points to avoid
Reporting considerations
In the next 15 minutes, I am going to talk about some methods of managing the customer experience across multiple payment channels, Identify some best practices that CDS Global has identified to manage the payment process across multiple channels including traditional paper, electronic and the quickly emerging mobile channel. I will also overview some pain points around management of disparate technologies and discuss reporting impacts as you move to an integrated billing and payment model.

5. Truly Integrated Billing Solution
Billing delivered to the end customer via
the presentation method they want
AND
the ability to pay bills via the
payment method they want!
Information across different methods is consistent and shared across all systems
Customer controls their bill-viewing and payment experience
A truly integrated bill presentment and payment solution is where the bill information can be delivered to the end customer via the presentation method they want…and…that bill can be paid by that customer via the bill payment method they want. That in itself can be achieved a number of ways, but the real value of a truly integrated solution is that the information across those different methods at the different stages is consistent and shared across all systems so not only you have the most recent customer activity, but the customer also has the visibility and the capability to control their bill viewing and payment experience.

6. Truly Integrated Billing Solution
Lets start at bill presentation point of the process. You are generating a billing print file to be used by your billing printing partner. With a truly integrated solution, that one billing print file can be used to print and mail the select customers that still want a physical bill….or….that file will be used to electronically generate and a bill notification to the select customers who only want to receive electronic bill. When you work with a single version of a print file and are generating that file for a single source provider you are greatly reducing risks of errors in file preparation and versioning as well as file receipt and bill generation. Another significant benefit of an integrated print and electronic presentment source is the fact that the two systems are tied together and the bill printed…is the exact bill that is presented electronically via the electronic payment portal (in fact, a bill printed off the electronic portal can be printed and sent to the lockbox as normal).

7. Truly Integrated Billing Solution
Speaking of lockbox processing, lets bring that side of the solution into the picture…
As your customers start to receive their billing statements in the mail and return their payment in a timely manner, it is important that you have a paper payment processing solution that is in tune with the paper bills that are being sent out on a monthly basis. As paper billing changes are made, sometimes it is overlooked that the bill generation specs should work closely with the paper payment solution to ensure that any adjustments can be easily received and read to ensure that the process remains efficient. With a truly integrated vendor solution, these two pieces of the solution are closely related and any desired changes are evaluated across the entire solution and implemented in a truly strategic fashion that is best for you.
As the returned payments continue to get processed, the value of a truly integrated solution continues to surface when you look at a couple of specific areas. First is the area of capturing recurring payments via the lockbox solution. With the integrated solution, your customer’s are able to indicate on their remittance stub that in addition to the enclosed payment, that they would like to enroll in recurring payments. This indication is flagged within the lockbox data output and passed to the electronic recurring payment processing solution to be managed on an ongoing basis. The next big value is the reporting aspect itself. When is comes to reporting of paper based and electronic based payment processing…the more sources generating reports, the more risk there is of your data getting out of sync. With an truly integrated payment solution, any payments processed (whether it is paper based or electronic) can be delivered by a single report and because all the payments are processed through one source, you know that those reports must balance with the dollars being moved through those channels.
I have mentioned it a few times already, but I wanted to turn your attention to the electronic bill presentment and payment piece of the puzzle.

8. Truly Integrated Billing Solution
In a truly integrated bill presentment and payment environment, the electronic channel is tied to both the paper bill printing solution as well as lockbox solution that processes the physical payments so the you can take advantage of the efficiencies, ease of use and consistency across all channels...but…just as important as the seamless integration is, that integration to the paper printing and processing is key for the electronic channel to present a high quality and highly valued interface to the end customer.
With an integrated solution, the standard EBPP interface that can take payments and “maybe” present a customer with a bill that looks like the one they received in the mail is no longer acceptable. With a truly integrated solution, the EBPP interface is now a customer’s view into their account where they can not only make payments and update their payment preferences, that customer can also view important billing information such as when their most recent bill entered the mail stream, they can view the method in which they made their last 2, 3, 4 payment where made, they can view past bills and bill inserts and even monitor the history of when they are made changes to their billing preferences (such as opt-in to electronic only or activating mobile billing capabilities).

9. Truly Integrated Billing Solution
Business Needs
Technology Needs
Marketplace/Consumer Needs
Provide billing and payment options across multiple channels to ensure that you are meeting the needs of the marketplace/consumer while continuing to respect the needs of your business and technology impacts is made that much more difficult when you are also wrestling with the moving target that is multiple source solutions. Moving towards a more truly integrated bill presentment and processing solution can help you eliminate a lot of the challenges associated with the billing process and allow you to focus on your business.
An integrated solution helps you meet the needs of today’s highly evolved customer based that has an increasing level of payment needs including more methods of notifications, more methods for your customer to interacting with you, and more ways for your customer to make a payment.

10. Next Steps
Evaluate and understand the needs and motivators of your customers
Align integrated solution strategy with customer needs
How would you integrate?
What are the impacts on the business and end customers?
Evaluate all options
Size and scope of the overall effort
Complete business case/plan and outline key measurable items
So what's next…?
Well, if you are ready to go and are looking for the right vendor…give us a call or stop by the booth! But if this discussion has just peaked your interest, I would suggest going back to the office and discussing this type of strategic solution at great length with your teams. As you start those discussions, you will want to consider…
How are you going to do it? - Determine if you want to develop an integrated solution in house or if you want to investigate potential solution providers. Most of you work with 2 or 3 different solution providers today, there would need to be discussions around what the impacts would be to your business based on those current relationships
Size up the effort and research the spend – Once there is an agreed to direction to move towards a truly integrated solution, the project would need to be researched and defined the exact size and scope. For this stage of activity, engage with a someone who can provide this type of service and insight…walk through the steps that you feel it would take to move toward the needed integration. From this analysis, you should be able to come up with a good idea of how much effort would be required on your side and you would also have an idea of how long the onboarding process would take. Moving in this type of direction is clearly not an overnight decision, each organization goes through their strategic approval process differently but as you approach yours…again, stay in contact with potential solution provider who should be able to answer any questions and gather any last minute support data that you need.
In addition to these straight forward project plan type of steps, you will also want to start discussing as an organization what are the key data elements you will want to measure and monitor with regard to when, where, and why your customers are paying their bills and via which method they use.
This information will allow you to start identifying key trends and key motivators that are driving your customers to specific payment methods.
These motivating factors will vary based on your unique customer base because of the external factors that exist within your customers (such as education level, economic factors and regional location) but identifying the right data set for your business will help you make decisions on
Lastly, when you get all the approvals in and its time to get started...that is when the excitement starts because you are that much closer to improving your billing efficiencies easing your burden regarding vendor management (dealing with single solution is way easier than dealing with 2 or 3…right?) and improving your customer’s satisfaction and value they have in your brand.

11. Q&A Session
I have asked Kathy Norgaard our Sr. Product Manager of Payment Solutions to lead the Q&A session because she is intimately involved with the onboadring process and what it take to make this type of activity as easy as possible with our utility clients….Kathy.
[Kathy says a few words and sets the ground rules for the Q&A session…and then opens it up to the floor for questions]

12.
John Goering Vice President of Solutions Engineering
CDS Global
Kathy Norgaard
Sr. Product Manager of Payment Solutions
CDS Global