PB readies online bill-paying system for Q4 launch
Pitney Bowes Inc. is aiming for a fourth-quarter U.S. launch of its Volly online bill payment system, with the open question lingering on whether the service will scale up rapidly amid myriad options for consumers.
Stamford-based Pitney Bowes unveiled Volly last year as a single platform for consumers to pay bills and view company communications, including catalogs and coupons. Many of Volly”™s features are available via varying ecommerce channels, however, and it remains to be seen whether a company that is an acknowledged expert in business-to-business communications will have the pulse of consumers. Rival Zumbox Inc. has a head start, launching this month its own iPad application for a digital “mailbox” to handle billing and other functions.
For its part, Pitney Bowes is relying on billers and other third parties to promote the service as a bridge to building better customer relationships.
“Most of the studies we”™ve seen suggest that consumers only trust banks or ”¦ financial institutions with money decisions,” said Barclays analyst Hale Holden, “Pitney Bowes doesn”™t really have a ”¦consumer brand and Volly certainly doesn”™t have a consumer brand.”
In a conference call, CFO Michael Monahan acknowledged Volly represents “a slower build,” but expressed confidence the service will be embraced by companies and by extension their customers.
“We felt it”™s very important that those brands play a part in validating Volly with the customers,” Monahan said. “There”™s a value proposition, both for them as well as for the consumers themselves, to have a point of aggregation of their bills, statements and other account information.”
In April, Pitney Bowes announced the Australia Post is the first national postal service to incorporate Volly into its digital offerings, with a spokesperson not saying whether Pitney Bowes is seeking a similar arrangement with the U.S. Postal Service.
To pay for Volly”™s expansion and other growth-minded investments under CEO Murray Martin, Pitney Bowes indicated it is expanding its “productivity initiatives,” without specifying whether that could result in a new round of job cuts. Pitney Bowes pared its payroll by 2,000 jobs last year, leaving it with a workforce of 29,700 people worldwide and 20,100 in the United States.
Pitney Bowes reported an 11 percent increase in Martin”™s compensation last year to $9.2 million, including estimates for stock and options that vest in future years based on the company”™s performance going forward.
Volly is one element Pitney Bowes is counting on for renewed growth. First-quarter sales drooped below $1.3 billion in the first quarter, down 5 percent from a year ago, though Pitney Bowes nearly doubled profits to $159 million.
Martin said some orders may have been delayed due to the “Drupa effect” of prospective customers wanting to attend May”™s Drupa print technologies convention, held every four years in Dusseldorf, Germany.
“We didn”™t really see anything there in lost business ”“ it was really more of deferral, and it sort of reminds us of a number of years ago we had that and then it came back afterwards,” Martin said. “You see in Europe with the situation there that there are delays and then some delays again in the financial services sector in the U.S.”