There are many fundamental differences in invoicing the business / corporate customer.

‘Business to Business’ EIPP in the USA, has to date been limited to the building and managing of self-service websites; a ‘COME AND GET IT‘ strategy.

This involves costly upfront software, lengthy implementation, hardware, web infrastructure & technical support. Further to this, these Internet based solutions have the following characteristics which limit adoption:

1. The biller needs to market to their business customers, enticing them to ‘go online’ and register. (This is the single biggest adoption inhibitor.)
2. Generally, it takes a minimum of eight clicks to view and pay invoices.
3. The website is difficult (and expensive) to customize to each customer. This ‘one size fits all’ strategy is not suited to today’s corporate demand for individual attention.
4. The login, whilst protected by SSL, is still publicly accessible.
5. The business recipient needs to be reasonably web savvy.
6. These solutions are not suitable for a distributed business.
7. Marketing opportunities are very difficult to personalize.

With email ‘presentment and payment’ technology, you are able to avoid these pitfalls by delivering your invoices, electronically and securely to your corporate customer.

There are many advantages to ‘pushing’ / ‘delivering‘ multi-invoices to your corporate customers. These include:

1. No action is required by the business customer to receive the invoices.
2. The same recipient/s of the paper invoices can now get them electronically.
3. Viewing and paying can be achieved in as few as two clicks.
4. Detailed ‘invoice presentment and payment’ can be delivered without the requirement of a website.
5. Invoice data capture is eliminated.
6. Disputed line items are easily, instantly and electronically managed. (After dispute submission, re-invoicing is instant and automatic.)
7. Payment can be made directly from the secure eInvoice. (This is optional for the customer.)
8. Multiple file types can be securely personalized, packaged, encrypted and compressed, in a single email:
   1. An invoice summary page
   2. An invoice summary page
   3. The invoice content & detail for each account
   4. Data files for upload into their accounting system
   5. Any regulatory required content
   6. Print quality copies of each invoice
   7. Graphical and sorting functionality
9. The biller is able to confirm that the invoice was received, when it was opened, if any marketing links were clicked on and view all the necessary reporting around payment.
10. Due to the ‘push’ nature of this kind of invoicing, extensive personalized marketing opportunities are available.
11. Incentivising trade discounts through early settlements are easily automated.

All of this is achieved without the need for the recipient to register or visit a single web page.

Email delivery of multi-invoices is as close to your current paper process as you can get in an electronic format, and requires the least (if any) change of process on the customer end.

It is for this very reason alone that email ‘invoice presentment & payment‘ will go a long way in solving the current anemic levels of EIPP adoption.