If your business is not harnessing the power of customer transaction data to optimize sales, marketing, product development, and customer service, it is likely that you have a Billing and Payments Problem. This paper identifies the warning signs of a potential billing and payment problem and clarifies the cost-drivers and business growth opportunities that suggest the need for a billing and payment solution.

1. Symptoms of a Billing and
Payment Problem

2. Cost-drivers and Benefit-opportunities of
Strategic Billing and Payments.
Transaction data holds opportunity to:
• Generate business, product, and customer insight,
• Deliver corporate cost-savings, and
• Powerful business analysis tools.
Billing and payment processes effect your ability to optimize
opportunity.
This presentation identifies the warning signs of a billing and payment
problem and clarifies the cost drivers that suggest the need for a new
billing and payment solution.

3. Symptoms of a Billing and Payments
Problem.
Symptom #1:
Your Average Interchange Fees are 2.5% or Higher.
Symptom #2:
You Cannot Identify or Quantify Your Best Customers.
Symptom #3:
Your Most Important Accounts are not Centrally-Managed.
Symptom #4:
You Have Little to No Control Over your Customers’ Sales Experience.

4. Symptom #1: Your Average Interchange
Fees are 2.5% or Higher.
The fee charged to a merchant for each transaction
processed varies based upon factors like:
• Type of card used,
• Type of merchant at which the card is used, and
• Volume of transactions that merchant generates.
Among the most expensive type of charge card to process is the P-Card, a payment method
popular among commercial customers because of its purchasing controls and reporting
options.
P-Card users drive up your average cost of transaction with little additional benefit to your
business. In fact, merchants often cite Interchange fees and merchant service fees as
reasons for non-acceptance of P-Cards and other commercial payment cards.

5. Symptom #2: You Cannot Identify or
Quantify Your Best Customers.
Transaction data provides foundational information used to optimize the lifetime
value of existing customers and to target new customers.
At any given time, a company should have the ability to:
• Pin-point its top five commercial customers,
• Identify trends in purchasing behaviors at the
product level, and
• Map transaction growth over time.
If individual stores or independent sales distributors
are not Level III data capable, or if transaction data is
not filtered to a central database, your company could be missing out on significant
incremental sales opportunities.

6. Symptom #3: Your Most Important
Accounts are not Centrally-Managed.
Commercial customers demand more than high-quality products, and they represent the
buying power to negotiate specialized pricing based upon:
• Annual spend with your company,
• Specific product quantities,
• Geographic needs, and/or
• Seasonal purchasing requirements.
Without centralized customer transaction data, you may
have to rely on your customer’s accounting records rather than your own to determine an
appropriate pricing-model or benefits package for a valued customer. Multiply this scenario
by tens, hundreds, or thousands and tracking of overall customer value becomes
cumbersome and inefficient.

7. Symptom #4: You Have Little to No Control
Over Your Customers’ Sales Experience.
Individual merchants may have varied levels of opportunity to develop relationships with
white-glove commercial accounts with benefits including:
• Specialized product pricing or rewards,
• Consolidated billings, and/or
• Monthly purchasing reports.
VIP treatment received from one merchant often
cannot be replicated throughout the sales network.
Despite your customers’ continued loyalty, their
pricing, rewards system or billing benefits may not always be honored. Individual
relationships between sales locations and the company may minimize the customers’
actual value to your business.

8. The Cost Benefit of a Billing and Payment
Solution.
The process of billing and payments has long been considered a cost-center - a tedious
administrative process necessary to collect monies owed.
A properly implemented billing and payment solution, however, can help your business:
• Decrease transaction fees,
• Standardize sales processes,
• Personalize the customer experience, and
• Drive incremental revenue.
In today’s data-driven business environment, classifying billing and payments as a cost-center
could cost your company significant dollars in the long-run.

9. Multi Service. Innovation Where it Matters.
Multi Service invoicing specializes in the design, implementation, and management of custom
billing and payment solutions. The company collaborates with clients to isolate specific
commercial credit and payment issues, identify measurable portfolio growth goals, and design
a tailored private label payment solution to optimize customer loyalty. The company’s expertise
in business-to-business sales processes assists clients in maximizing the lifetime value of
individual commercial accounts and optimizing their overall commercial portfolio.
Thank you for your interest in this free presentation. We welcome your comments, feedback,
and suggestions. Please consider sending us a note about how this presentation has helped
you. Check out the Multi Service Commercial Payments blog at multiservice.com. If would like
to contact a private label business development analyst directly, you can call +1-913-451-2400
or email contact-private-label@multiservice.com.