Netroscope, a market-research and consulting firm focused on evaluating cutting-edge computer technologies and market trends, Tuesday announced a comprehensive study of electronic billing and its impact on financial institutions, billers, payment processors, technology providers, and consumers. The report entitled, “Electronic Bill Payment and Presentment(EBPP): A Road to Customer Loyalty” identifies potential market opportunities, examines bill payment and presentment integration approaches, evaluates various technology components, and discusses the missing opportunities for both banks and billers in customer profiling, billing standards, and new services.
According to this comprehensive study EBPP is poised to enhance and expand consumers’ relationship with their banks and billers. EBPP enables banks to offer a range of services, including Internet banking, financial planning, and tailored aggregation services that can help banks to sell, cross-sell, and up-sell. Billers can use EBPP approach to advance their call center operations, offer affinity programs, and establish dynamic bill management capabilities.
“We don’t expect EBPP to be a moneymaking business for banks,” said Natalie Shaheen, President of Netroscope. “But the value of a well expanded customer relationship far exceeds the benefits of short-term gains. A successful deployment of EBPP allows banks to better understand their customers’ spending patterns and relationships with other service providers. Nevertheless, consumer privacy is a sensitive subject. Most consumers won’t mind being cross-sold on products that they are interested in or need. However, customer profiling and cross-selling must be accomplished in a non-invasive and non-intrusive way.”
According to this report, at the heart of any EBPP model, banks are faced with four major challenges: (1) billers reluctance to participate at this early stage, (2) lack of consumer rally in support of EBPP, (3) insufficient data on EBPP cost savings, and (4) adverse impact on Lock-box operations.
A non biller-distributed approach could potentially compromise billers’ customer relationship. Billers are also facing five major challenges: (1) preserving their identity with customers, (2) selecting a successful EBPP approach to generate critical mass, (3) providing dual support for both electronic and non-electronic billing, (4) establishing widely accepted billing standards, and (5) bridging the gap between legacy systems and electronic delivery channels.
“Carefully orchestrating a user friendly solution capable of managing the customer relationship with both banks and billers is a key to making electronic commerce a true reality,” said Shaheen.
“Electronic Bill Payment and Presentment: A Road to Customer Loyalty” represents the kick-off of Netroscope’s e-commerce subscription services. To order this report, please contact Netroscope at 408/562-6350 or [[email protected]][1].
About Netroscope:
Netroscope is a cyber-centric market research and consulting company focused on evaluation and assessment of leading-edge technologies and market trends, with the objective of supporting strategic business requirements of the industry. Netroscope’s services include syndicated and customized research, marketing and sales support services, assessment of corporate and vendor trends, “thinking council” advisory services, monthly newsletters, and daily alerts.
[1]: mailto:[email protected]
