Examples of E-Billing Approaches

Unless your trading partners are willing to bill you or pay you online, there’s little use in deploying electronic invoice presentment and payment (EIPP) technology. Getting them on board requires being flexible and minimizing the amount of system-to-system integration needed to participate. Here’s how some buyers and sellers have brought their trading partners online:

• AT&T Wireless gives small business and consumer customers the choice to manage their entire relationship with the company online through its website or to use the Web for just some transactions. Judy Cavalieri, the company’s director of e-business strategy and marketing, says AT&T Wireless is also considering whether to offer customers financial incentives to go paperless.
• Con-Way Transportation Services pushes the convenience of being able to route invoices to multiple recipients and eliminate mail delays, says Vice President of Information Services Jacquelyn Barretta. Customers have to arrange to be authenticated by Con-Way’s systems but can otherwise choose how they view the data?on Con-Way’s site or downloaded into their own systems.
• General Electric’s legal department informed its outside law firms that its goal was to have all firms doing work for GE to send invoices electronically. But the corporate legal office let the business units decide how quickly resisters?mostly small law firms?had to comply. Firms that aren’t doing much GE business right now are allowed a pass, though they will probably be required to start using the system if they get a significant case, says Senior Counsel for Legal Operations Suzanne Hawkins.
• Air BP wrote middleware to translate Web-based information into the electronic data interchange format used by its ERP systems, says Bob Novaria, treasurer of BP North America and the sponsor of the company’s e-billing project. Then Air BP sold small customers on the benefits of going paperless.