Metavante BSP Small Business

Transcription

1 Ellen Walsh Product Report 27 September 2002 Summary Metavante s BSP Small Business product offers financial institutions the opportunity to provide electronic invoice presentment and payment to small business customers without having to make a substantial investment in technology. Table of Contents Overview Analysis Pricing Competitors Strengths Limitations Insight List Of Tables Table 1: : Features and Functions Gartner Entire contents 2002 Gartner, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction of this publication in any form without prior written permission is forbidden. The information contained herein has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable. Gartner disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information. Gartner shall have no liability for errors, omissions or inadequacies in the information contained herein or for interpretations thereof. The reader assumes sole responsibility for the selection of these materials to achieve its intended results. The opinions expressed herein are subject to change without notice.

2 Corporate Headquarters Metavante Corporation P.O Box Milwaukee, WI 53224, U.S.A. Tel: Internet: Overview The Metavante Biller Service Provider (BSP) Small Business solution is targeted at financial institutions that want to provide small business invoice presentment and payment services as part of their small business portal. The small business solution is designed to allow the small business to enroll itself instantly and be self-service oriented. The financial institution has the ability to charge small businesses to use the service. In addition to the electronic invoice presentment and payment, the solution allows a small business to outsource its paper bill print and mail function. Metavante has had the ability to offer outsourced print and mail functionality to its customers for some time and has been cutting a significant number of checks as part of its pay anyone functionality since late Table 1: : Features and Functions Publish Bills Console QA Customers Messages Bill batches published to customers to view and pay Unpublished batches uploaded to Web to undergo quality assurance (QA) in preparation to be published Allows for quality assurance checking of batches of bills Unmatched customers viewing option Match customers to lists Review customer bills by invoice number customer name, due date, amount due, actions taken, or view bills as the customer sees them Randomly check all bills or view all batch bills Delete batches of bills Delete a particular bill in a batch View any bill in a batch View statistics on published batches A customer list is created automatically when the biller uploads a bill batch and contains invoice number, enrollment status, amount, and zip code match Customers awaiting approval who have entered inaccurate information upon enrollment and could not be automatically authenticated are identified and routed to the proper channels for identity verification Billers can match to existing customers, create new customers or decline enrollment Customer Groups are biller specific groupings of customers based on factors selected by the biller to target that group for specific marketing or other uses Billers can send and receive messages internally through the business service provider (BSP) to customers using the Pay Your Bills Console to respond to or read a message or initiate a message 27 September

3 Table 1: : Features and Functions Promotions Reports Preferences Biller Enrollment Bill Publishing For each promotion, there can be five messages targeted at five different customer groups in descending order of delivery priority Reports are available for enrollment and payments General preferences include: online logo, financial information, password, address, accept online payments, customer payment methods To accept online payments, billers must have a Merchant ID provided by the financial institution Users of the BSP must be enrolled at the financial institution s Web site Business, Contact, Financial and agreement information must be provided at time of enrollment Customers may pay billers via bank accounts or credit cards Invoices must be generated by either QuickBooks or Peachtree Accounting Small Business customers are directed to the Utilities tab to download arriver for uploading invoices from accounting packages. The driver looks like just another printer to the operator of the small business accounting package. QuickBooks and Peachtree Invoices must be printed using the Publish Your Bills Driver Files must be uploaded to publish your bills for parsing BSP checks for duplicate invoices by date and invoice number and will upload duplicates Analysis The small business segments (billers) that are likely to utilize BSP Small Business are invoicing 50 to 2,000 business bills per month and are using an off-the-shelf accounting package. Industries most likely to use the BSP Small Business solution include Health, Business Services, Finance and Insurance, Wholesale Trade, Transportation, Manufacturing and Construction. Metavante has made the signup process for both small business billers and their customers a relatively easy process. The Biller Console is used by billers to publish bills to the Web as well as those invoices that are to be printed and mailed. Billers have the ability to perform quality control and monitor what bills have been published to the Web, as well as correct customers that have not been automatically approved. Verification of customers who are enrolling is done automatically by matching invoice numbers, invoice amounts and zip codes. Small business billers cannot use the BSP until they have enrolled at the financial institution s Web site. Billers must provide business, financial, contact and agreement information. For invoices to be properly formatted for presentment on the Internet, Metavante requires that the invoices be generated by QuickBooks or Peachtree Accounting Packages. Formatting for addresses in QuickBooks is unstructured. For BSP to reliably parse address information, it must comply with certain formats. For example, QuickBooks provides a text box for entering address information for invoices and allows five lines to record the information. To deliver bills to, the biller must download a printer driver from the financial institution Web site. The biller can also upload company logo files in standard graphics interchange format (GIF) or Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPG) for, and the BSP parses them to be presented to the biller s customers over the Internet. The solution is designed to work with the current processes and controls that a small business has in place. 27 September

4 Pricing For retail financial institutions, the cost is between US$80,000 to $100,000 to set-up the product. In addition, there are monthly minimums in place for the number of bills processed. Processing fees range from $0.70 to $1.00. GSA Pricing No. Competitors CheckFree WebPay CheckFree has also developed a small business offering, however instead of being marketed as a Biller BSP product, it is geared toward Consumer Service Providers (CSPs) and their accounts payable function. CheckFree has much experience in the small business market, since it processes bill payments for QuickBooks customers. The WebPay Small Business product builds on the WebPay consumer product and adds functionality such as multiuser access capability allowing multiple employees to access a single account. Management can have final approval over accounts payable. In addition, extended remittance fields allow small businesses to consolidate numerous invoices from a single biller into a single payment. CheckFree WebPay for Small Business offers financial services organizations an integrated electronic billing and payment product for their small business clients in an outsourced solution. CheckFree uses its Genisys platform for processing payments. Intuit QuickBooks Intuit is committed to the small business market and offers several different products and services. QuickBooks Online Billing provides ing of invoices and allows customers to pay online by credit card or direct account transfer. Merchant account services allows billers to accept credit card payments in QuickBooks by phone, mail, in-person or online. Intuit charges $14.95 a month for the Deluxe Online Billing. Service. Basic Online Billing, which allows ing of invoices, statements and estimates is free. Customers can access a private customized Web page where they can view billing history, print invoices, submit inquiries and set payment reminders. CheckFree processes payment transactions for QuickBooks. Intuit also has a relationship with PayPal for businesses that want to send payments via to another business. Fidesic Unlike Metavante BSP small business, which focuses on the lower end of the small business market, Fidesic offers a hosted solution that focuses on the mid-market. Fidesic offers a Microsoft-based solution that integrates with Great Plains software or Intuit Quickbooks software to help simplify the accounts payable and accounts receivable process. Fidesic customers that use the Great Plains functionality purchase the necessary software and services from a Great Plains reseller to implement the solution. Strengths Supports Payment of Paper and Electronic Bills BSP small business has pay anyone functionality that allows payment of both paper and electronic bills. A small business can enter payment information for customers that do not present bills electronically. Printing and Mailing of Paper Invoices 27 September

5 Metavante BSP allows billers to outsource the complete billing function. This includes the capability of printing, stuffing and mailing of all invoices. Strong Payments Expertise Metavante built its own pay anyone engine, which is also being used by Spectrum. In addition, Metavante originates over 17 million automated clearing house (ACH) transactions per month and processes over 5.1 million payment transactions monthly. Quality Control Tools for Billers Unlike some of its competitors, Metavante allows the biller to preview bills for accuracy before they are sent to the customer. This puts the quality control in the biller s hands, instead of the outsourcer. In addition, Metavante provides billers with a robust set of tools for being able to change bills and provides a level of biller control for an outsourced solution. Billers can view random sets of bills or select individual bills. A biller can delete bills or pull them from a batch of bills if he or she find errors. Service Bureau Experience Metavante has been hosting solutions for financial services firms for over 38 years and is very familiar with data center issues such as security, scalability and disaster recovery. Strong Financial Picture Metavante is part of Marshall and Ilsley Corporation, a $29 billion-asset bank holding company. Metavante has over 5,100 clients and does not rely solely on electronic bill presentment and payment (EBPP) as a single revenue stream. Limitations Not Yet Integrated With Financial Services Account Analysis Packages Currently, the biller s business credit card is charged for EIPP. The BSP offering is not yet integrated with Financial Services Account Analysis Packages, which would provide a more integrated solution. Changes From QuickBooks Formats Subtle changes may have to be made to be able to upload invoices to Metavante BSP. For example, formatting of address information in QuickBooks is relatively unstructured, and Metavante BSP requires that the address be structured in a certain way, or parsing will not occur. This could require some reformatting for small businesses that have not initially formatted bills according to what BSP Small Business requires. Limited Support for Small Business Accounting Packages Although Metavante BSP supports Intuit QuickBooks and Peachtree accounting packages, it does not have support for other mid-market accounting packages such as Sage Small Business, Oracle Small Business and Microsoft Great Plains software. Limited Integration to Receivables Process Although BSP Small Business does allow for dispute notes, it also does not yet include support for more extended functionality such as reconciliation of disputes with accounting packages. Billers must still manually track differences between amount paid and amount owed. No message is sent to the accounting package if an amount is paid that does not match the invoices. Small businesses do not have 27 September

6 a way to track partial pays, paying early to take advantage of discounts and other more advanced functions. No International Payment Support BSP for Small Business currently supports U.S. payments only. Insight Metavante s BSP Small Business product is a good solution for U.S. financial institutions, which want to offer their customers electronic invoice presentment and payment as part of their small business portal. Metavante s BSP Small Business solution also makes a lot of sense for those small businesses who prefer to outsource the printing, stuffing and mailing of their paper bills. 27 September