Swiss Post Solutions (SPS) is pleased to announce that it has signed a two and a half year contract with Zenith Hygiene Group plc, the UK's largest privately owned independent manufacturer and supplier of hygiene chemicals and ancillary products, to manage the fulfilment of their customer billing documents in the UK and Ireland, incorporating a managed transition from physical print and postal despatch to a digital delivery solution.

Under the contract SPS will provide automated printing, enclosing and despatch of customer invoices, statements and reminders from its Welwyn Garden City Document Processing Centre, whilst at the same time commencing a migration programme to electronic presentment through a dedicated online Zenith customer portal.

"What we liked about SPS is their ability to deliver significant cost savings right from the outset of the project, whilst also developing a technology enabled solution to take us forward." said Raxs Patel, IT Director, Zenith Hygiene Group plc.

SPS will initially implement a number of quick win initiatives to drive costs out of the current operation including match and merge technology to consolidate multiple documents into a single mailing. Where customers might previously have received six or seven separate communications including statements, new invoices, account updates, etc., these will now be automatically collated into a single envelope during the printing process. Further postage savings will also be achieved through the use of SPS’ postal consolidator, enabling Zenith to access reduced postal tariffs.

Prior to the contract with SPS, Zenith was despatching only 40% of customer invoices, statements and reminders electronically, with the majority going out in the post. The new contract will see a significant change to this.

"SPS have created an online portal for us that will encourage many more of our customers to migrate across to electronic delivery saving them and us valuable time and costs in handling invoicing. This is an absolutely essential solution for us as it will develop and grow with our business making customer account work much easier and much quicker to handle," explained Raxs.

The SPS eBilling platform will operate as a 'pull' solution - allowing Zenith customers to access their current and historic account data through a dedicated online portal. Customers can use the secure website to check the status of their accounts and view or download invoices, statements and raise and resolve queries, including online access to Proof of Delivery notes.   

There are numerous advantages for Zenith including document delivery that is not reliant on postal delivery, avoiding risks of delay or exposure to ever increasing postal charges. Zenith's customers benefit too through the ability to access billing data in formats that can be imported directly into their in-house systems, raise queries and obtain copy documents at the click of a button.

The new portal will provide Zenith with greater visibility, improved customer interaction, as well as significant cost savings. By reducing the need for paper, printing, postage and physical archiving Zenith is adopting a sustainable, scalable and efficient solution for the distribution of billing documents to their customers.     

SPS is encouraging Zenith's credit controllers to take the initiative on migrating more customers to eBilling by supplying a weekly electronic file to Finance that shows customer conversions for each credit controller.

Commenting on the new set of services, Charlie Peters, UK Sales & Marketing Director, at SPS said:

“We're delighted that Zenith has seen the cost savings through our match and merge and consolidation capability. But it's through our innovative and scalable eBilling solution where we will really transform and add value to Zenith's business by improving their current system of credit control and payment and increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty through the high level of self-service functionality and interaction.