Monday, March 10, 2008
Case Study: FTD Provides Members with Online Billing Services
Situation:
FTD Inc. is a membership organization of roughly 20,000 florists and floral shops. Everything a florist needs from floral inventory and holiday specials to design consulting, point of sale systems and integration with the international ordering network, the Mercury Network as branded by the iconic Mercury Man, are provided through FTD membership.
Every month FTD needs to present each member with Clearing House Statements that present their network expense summaries of the business conducted for that month. Traditionally, these statements would be manually processed and mailed at great cost and lose of timeliness.
Solution:
Performance Communications Group, back in 1998, presented a dynamic printing solution, which would bundle multiple data files and mass print these individual Clearing House Statements. The statements would then be mailed to members systematically, saving both time and money.
In 2002, PCG presented a secured electronic process that would also deliver these statements electronically through an FTD member portal.
Results:
The move to electronic statements has established a new level of cost savings through the reduction of archiving, integration of an online payments collection engine and other new electronic member benefits.
FTD has saved significant money with increased year over year adoption of the electronic statement system by their members. So much so, that even the FTD customer service representatives use the online payment system when members call-in their credit card payments.
As a bonus, legal issues between members and FTD have been reduced in both frequency and cost. Coincidentally, this was the time when the Sarbane-Oxley laws were passed, which mandated new methods of financial compliance. PCG's solution solved these legal issues as well.
FTD Inc. is a membership organization of roughly 20,000 florists and floral shops. Everything a florist needs from floral inventory and holiday specials to design consulting, point of sale systems and integration with the international ordering network, the Mercury Network as branded by the iconic Mercury Man, are provided through FTD membership.
Every month FTD needs to present each member with Clearing House Statements that present their network expense summaries of the business conducted for that month. Traditionally, these statements would be manually processed and mailed at great cost and lose of timeliness.
Solution:
Performance Communications Group, back in 1998, presented a dynamic printing solution, which would bundle multiple data files and mass print these individual Clearing House Statements. The statements would then be mailed to members systematically, saving both time and money.
In 2002, PCG presented a secured electronic process that would also deliver these statements electronically through an FTD member portal.
Results:
The move to electronic statements has established a new level of cost savings through the reduction of archiving, integration of an online payments collection engine and other new electronic member benefits.
FTD has saved significant money with increased year over year adoption of the electronic statement system by their members. So much so, that even the FTD customer service representatives use the online payment system when members call-in their credit card payments.
As a bonus, legal issues between members and FTD have been reduced in both frequency and cost. Coincidentally, this was the time when the Sarbane-Oxley laws were passed, which mandated new methods of financial compliance. PCG's solution solved these legal issues as well.
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