A few months ago, during a software presentation, a prospect asked about outsource printing and ebilling and mentioned that, with new software, he hoped to move to outsource billing with no increase in cost. His premise was, with enough customers opting for ebills, the increase in the cost of moving from postcards to outsourced full-page bills would be offset by the number of customers who opted for ebilling.
Ebilling savings
Customers who elect to receive an ebill (providing you don’t offer the option of continuing to receive a paper bill when your customers opt for ebilling) don’t incur either the cost of postage or the production cost of printing and mailing a paper bill. These are the two major cost components of sending paper bills.
Postage rate increase
With the recent postage rate increase (you did stock up on Forever stamps before the price went up, didn’t you?), I was reflecting on the conversation with this prospect. I wondered how difficult it would be to calculate the ebilling adoption rate required for this prospect’s theory to become reality.
Outsourcing calculator
With that in mind, I developed an Outsourcing Calculator. The calculator asks for four inputs:
- number of bills mailed
- current bill format
- current postage rate (it will estimate this based on the bill format if you don’t know)
- current cost other than postage (paper, printer supplies, labor, etc.)
It will calculate both your current cost and projected cost with outsourcing and determine how many customers must opt for ebilling, with the corresponding adoption rate, to break even when moving to outsourcing.
