Client Detail:
The client is a large waste management company with 35,000+ employees operating in several locations across 40 U.S. States. They provide non-hazardous solid waste collection, transfer, disposal, recycling, and energy services to over 14 million U.S. customers.
Since 2012, MSS Business Transformation Advisory (MSSBTA) has provided consulting services to the client's Information Technology (IT) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) applications leadership teams.
The Challenge:
Since 2012, the client had outsourced print and mail services to a national banking institution, including:
File receipt processing
Data composition and processing
Printing
Insertion
Mail preparation, mailing of invoices and collection letters, and
Mailing of ACH payments reported by the third-party bill pay vendor
The bank also provided an Automated Funds Processing (AFP) output file to the client’s third-party bill pay vendor for and an indexed PDF image for most statement types for transmission to the client’s internal document storage (IDS) application. But in 2019, the bank notified the client they would be discontinuing their invoice printing and mailing business. By the end of 2019, the client identified a replacement vendor. The challenge was to implement, test, and rollout the new print and mail service by the summer of 2020.
Our Solution:
MSSBTA was selected as part of the project team because of our in-depth knowledge of the client’s billing and collection processes, including the related technology integration. The project team quickly organized a three-day discovery workshop that included the Fiserv vendor project team and primary participants from Accounts Receivable, National Accounts, IT, and third-party vendors. This implementation was a top priority for the client.
To minimize impact to the timeline, the team agreed to postpone considering any process improvements until a later phase and implemented a governance model to closely monitor scope changes. They conducted a structured analysis of each type of invoice and collection letter from three primary billing and collection applications and provided thorough documentation of requirements to the vendor. Early and rigorous reviews of the vendor output were conducted. When the 2020 pandemic hit and all the project participants converted to remote work, the team replaced the anticipated vendor print facility site visits with daily FedEx deliveries of printed output to the core team for testing. They increased the frequency of working sessions, as needed, to offset the inability to meet in person.
Their Results:
To offset concerns about the testing, the joint project team designed a controlled rollout approach by first selecting locations that typically had a lower volume of calls to the CRCs and no quarterly invoice volume spikes in June. The phased rollout took place over four-months to manage risk and minimize disruptions to the client’s customers and their field support personnel.
In addition to meeting the timeline to transition to a new print vendor, the client’s transition was completed with:
No increase to customer call volumes
No delays in printing and mailing to customers
No impact to cash DSO position, and
Print quality assurance
Deliverables:
Leadership and Accountability
Facilitation and Project Management
Analysis, Training, and Documentation