Forrester recently released a survey indicating that by 2012 online bill payment will surpass direct billing for the first time. From this we can deduce that the online billing market is growing rapidly. Are you growing with it or are you being left in the dust? (http://www.finextra.com/fullstory.asp'id=20141)

In another recent study by Aspen Analytics, it was found that customers that pay their bills online were 76% less likely to leave their bank. It only makes sense that those customers are also less likely to leave their service providers and utility companies that offer eBilling solutions.

What does this mean to the average utility company or service provider? It means that your online billing solution choice is going to become even more of a differentiator as eBilling becomes the normal business practice for bill payment. In other words, simply having an eBilling solution will no longer be enough to differentiate your company. If you choose a cheap, difficult to use eBilling solution, you are likely to be left in the wake of your competition. It is time to start looking for a quality solution that fully meets your customers' needs; before your competition does.

In the study by Aspen Analytics, they found that companies that pay their bills online are over 15% more profitable than those who pay using traditional direct billing. How does bill payment affect overall profitability? Online bill payment adds efficiency to bill payment and companies are far more likely to pay their bills on time or early, therefore, avoiding fees, if they pay online. So, by simply providing an eBilling option to your customers, you are promoting their long term success and their ability to be a long term customer.

Today's top of the line solutions provide both eBilling and analysis functionality. By providing one of the more robust eBilling solutions that offer both eBilling and analytics, that percentage of increased profitability is more than likely going to rise to a much higher number. Bill analysis solutions allow customers to easily and efficiently allocate expenses and review trending reports that can lead to higher efficiency in business processes; allowing companies to identify areas for improvement.

Many businesses are utilizing the bill management systems offered by their service providers to enhance efficiency and improve resource management. Businesses are also using the automated analytics tools offered by many service providers to do their allocation management and trend reporting for them – rather than having an internal resource dedicated to that activity. Long gone are the days of 200 page paper bills and spreadsheet analysis. More robust tools are now available.

Many of these programs provide feature rich functionality that empowers business customers from large SMEs to multi-national businesses to produce the reports they need to conduct business, increasing customer satisfaction. Some of these programs even provide sophisticated levels of functionality that allow users to design customized reports that can be stored and run on demand. Reports are quickly generated and can be easily exported for distribution or use in other packages. Structures, reflecting that of the organization, enable users to allocate costs easily to account codes. The ability to allow the individual user to identify their personal and business costs is also available in many of the top of the line eBilling solutions.

In the process of providing your customers with a solution that can help them to be more efficient in analyzing and allocating their bills, you will also be helping them to become more profitable overall. Considering the added customer loyalty that comes with providing eBilling and now the increased profitability that your advanced eBilling system will afford them, they are likely to be your customers for a very long time.