“Provides an end-to-end education of the telecoms’ billing output challenges, options and future.”
– Baldwin Velez-Chua, Rogers Communications
 

“Very informative and thought provoking.”
– Judi Poole, AT&T

“The conference helped us understand if our current strategy is going in the right direction and what has paid dividends for other companies.”
– Osama Abu-Shihab, Bell Canada
 

THURSDAY, JANUARY 31, 2008

8:00 Registration Opens

MORNING SESSIONS - STATEMENT DESIGN

9:00-10:00

Redesigning Your Billing Statement: Lessons Learned

Each of the companies represented below recently completed an extensive redesign of their consumer billing statement. Learn why they did it, the requirements they established, the planning and process involved in realizing their objectives, lessons learned and benefits realized.

Michael Lynn, Senior Billing Analyst, Qwest

Rafe Maestas, Billing Lifecycle Management - Customer Billing Services, Sprint

10:00-10:45

Turning Complex Services Billing into Customized, Quality-Assured Statements

To manage the complex variety of options across residential and business products and services, companies of all types are moving away from 'exception billing' towards rules-based statement customization. In this case study session, learn how the Orlando Utilities Commission (OUC) presents over twenty guaranteed accurate, customized billing formats to address the needs of specific customer types, including business, residential and employee. By applying unique business rules and the ability to review potentially inaccurate data before bills are printed and mailed, OUC has saved tens of thousands of dollars each year in special handling costs.

Leslie Temmen, Director, System Process Support, Orlando Utilities Commission

Laura Dean, Director of Marketing & Product Management, CSG Systems, Inc.

10:45-11:15 Break and Exhibits

11:15-12:00

Using Direct Mail Techniques to Build the Perfect Statement

The advent of affordable color imaging has raised the profile of the billing statement; it is now a valuable client touch point that offers TransPromo opportunities. But how does a biller take advantage of the potential of color to create a statement that is highly effective and that can evolve as business needs change? This session will show how the basic techniques of direct mail can be used to create an improved statement program. We will discuss the use of proven design techniques, testing, and response analytics to deliver a statement that continually evolves based on response rates.

Steve Keca, Director, Product Development, RR Donnelley

Peter Karavos, Managing Partner, Simplified Communications Group

12:00-1:15 Lunch and Exhibits

AFTERNOON SESSIONS –
ELECTRONIC BILL PRESENTMENT AND PAYMENT

1:15-2:30

The State of eBilling, Presentment and Payment: Defining and Realizing Success

While the benefits of EBPP for communications service providers are obvious, despite huge investments by them, its adoption rate for a majority of companies remain mired in the single digits. What is it going to take to finally make EBPP a success and allow service providers to realize the promised return on their investment? How does one define success? Is one model/approach more effective than other? What can be learned from other industries? How does usage differ by market segments and what unique requirement exist between the segments?

Vito Casalinuovo, Senior Manager, Online Billing and Payment, Rogers Communications

Steve Dubner, Director of Strategic Alliances, OSG Billing Services
John Hughes, Assistant Vice President, Product Marketing & Management, Converged Billing, Comverse

Joe Tapscott, Director of IT, Business Solutions, Helio
Kenny Pope, Partner Relationship Manager, AT&T Online Customer Services

2:30-3:15

Providing Electronic Billing Capabilities for Differing Customer Needs

With the advent of Sarbanes-Oxley, telecom service providers are faced with the need to provide their customers with robust bill analysis capabilities. Customers have differing needs, ranging from those who need consistently formatted bulk data to those who need access to the data and robust functions to enable them to mine the data. Verizon Business has implemented a set of capabilities that provide their customers with a global view of total spend and multiple options for bill analysis, depending on the needs of the customer.

David Landry, Executive Director, Verizon Business

3:15-3:45 Break and Exhibits

3:45-4:30

Allowing Your Customers to Better Manage their Billing Information Online

AT&T eBill is a robust online tool that currently enables over 53,000 AT&T enterprise business customers to view their invoice details, analyze billing data through standard or custom reports, make inquiries, request billing adjustments, see payment history, and even pay bills. The speaker will showcase the eBill tool and the value it provides AT&T’s enterprise business customers.

John Cushman, Vice President, AT&T

4:30-5:15

Extending Online Billing to Bank Websites

Hear how Verizon Wireless extended its online payment options beyond its own website by enabling customers to also view and pay bills directly at their bank site. The discussion will address the reasons Verizon Wireless chose to offer e-bills at bank websites, the impact on operational efficiency and collection speed, and the effect on website usage. Attendees will also learn the co-marketing techniques used by Verizon Wireless and a leading bank to triple e-bill adoption at the bank website once the service was in place.

Tim Whitridge, Manager, Treasury Services, Corporate Treasury, Verizon Wireless

Lori Stepp, Director, Product Management, E-Bill Advancement, CheckFree

5:15-6:15 Reception and Exhibits

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 2008

MORNING SESSIONS– PRINTING AND MAILING

8:30-9:15

How Is your Print and Mail Vendor Performing? 

A print and mail vendor report card identifies and quantifies the vendor’s performance. The speaker will describe how to create an effective print and mail vendor report card based on his experience overseeing the printing and mailing operations for over 37+ million customer bills and 5.2 million other customer monthly outputs at a major carrier. The presentation will address the process for developing a report card including: potential report card components, establishing baseline performance, report card methodology, and managing the vendor’s reaction.

Philip Claire, Consultant, TSRI

9:15-10:00

The Four Things You Need to Know about Mail In 2008

There are four significant changes happening in the postal world this year. These include: impacts from the postal rate increase, rural route address conversions, address change updates, and Intelligent Mail Barcode. Learn what these changes mean to large mailers and how you can reduce or take advantage of their impacts. From taking advantage of the lower second ounce rate of First Class mail to what needs to be done to not get hit with significant postage increases resulting in new postal regulations, every attendee will be able to take away something that their company can do.

Mury Salls, Vice President, Postal Relations, DST Output, and President, Major Mailers Association

10:00-10:30 Break

10:30-11:15 - 11:30-12:15

NETWORKING ROUNDTABLES

One of the most popular sessions at TeleStrategies’ events, networking roundtables are your opportunity to sit down with your peers—in an informal, collegial setting—to share your questions, insights and experiences on billing output-related issues you want to learn more about. Each topic will have its own table with a facilitator and will be repeated both time slots. Table topics include:

·         Print Outsourcing Management

·         100% Electronic Bill Transformation and Delivery (even with legacy systems

·         Statement Design

·         Bill Presentment Issues Related to Digital Content and NGN Services

·         Conducting a Postal Analysis to Pinpoint Savings

·         Transpromo and Telecom

·         Billing Format Validation and Transformation