BPAY inspires smarter bill payments

By Rodney Appleyard

Jul 18, 2005: The success of paying bills online via BPAY has inspired the idea of also sending bills directly to people's desktops instead of through the post, in an attempt to streamline work processes and allow customers to make personal enquiries.

ConnXion is an Australian based company that provides document production and delivery solutions to help organisations migrate from paper-based systems to electronic ones, has the capability of providing this service, and already has this system up and running at Budget Rent a Car in Australia.

ConnXion provides services for sending invoices, statements, reminder letters, remittance advices and reports to customers, shareholders, employees and suppliers across multiple delivery channels, including email, fax, SMS and the postal system.

David Colvin, the CEO of ConnXion, said that 12 million transactions are made through BPAY each month and he believes it is about time that the original piece of paper that is still sent through the post can now be sent electronically instead.

"We expect in the future that organisations will prefer to send their bills as intelligent, smart documents, similar to the products that Adobe and Microsoft are working towards. This means that a bill will be sent to your desktop via email, the user will be able to open the intelligent document up, read the bill and click a button to pay it.

"It will also allow the user to make a query. For instance, they may disagree with the amount owed, so they will be able to send an email that asks a question. This email will go directly to somebody at the organisation who can respond to them quickly."

Colvin says that this system will be more user-friendly and secure than the current paper method that is used. Budget Rent a Car uses this system so that customers can pay for car bills via an intelligent document to send to them via email.

ConnXion also provides electronic document services to DHL Express in Australia and New Zealand, and last week landed a deal with DHL Express based in Singapore.

This new contract will involve the delivery of 1,000,000 documents a year and will allow them to choose whether they receive their invoices, statements and supporting documents by post, email or fax, to minimise the need for paper in the billing processes and to drive down cost.

DHL Express in Australia is planning to start sending bills electronically instead of with the use of paper in about six months time.

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