[Sydney, Australia, May 9, 2000]: Telecommunications giant Telstra will offer Internet billing for
customers through its site, after signing a development deal with
management and consulting firm Andersen
Consulting and e-billing and management software and services company
edocs.
Under the proposed service, customers will be able to receive and pay
Telstra bills online, and elect to access a number of other services, such
as email bill notification and online bill analysis. They can also initiate
conversation with call centre staff through the site.
Andersen and edocs will deliver a joint solution, with the consulting
firm as prime contractor providing overall systems integration for the
Internet billing. edocs will supply its off-the-shelf Electronic Bill
Presentment and Payment suite BillDirect as the basis for Telstra’s system.
BillDirect is a three tier client server systems that works in
conjunction with relational database management systems, email servers and
legacy billing systems, and supports standards such as HTML, Java, POP3,
XML, MIME and SSL.
The product supports multiple concurrent users, and employs an
interactive environment for defining and testing rules for extracting
legacy data to simplify the transition to electronic billing.
edocs already has a foothold in several verticals, including
telecommunications, utilities and financial services, however edocs
executive vice president Jim Moran said this deal would “represent a
validation of the importance of Internet billing to telecommunications
providers”.
With the tender confirmed, Telstra is hoping to launch the service in
July or August of this year, although no date has yet been confirmed.