In the mid-1990s, Mayer Electric Supply, Birmingham, AL, prepared and mailed its invoices and statements in-house. The distributor had employees who printed the mailings on high-speed printers at night and used a machine to fold and stuff the mailings. It also maintained a Pitney-Bowes postal machine.

It was quite a cost factor to do all of that, says Mayer Electric CIO Barry Carden.

So Mayer started looking at outsourcing its paper billing. The electrical distributor, which serves mostly the Southeast U.S., found a provider in 2001. Despite a few issues – like some double mailings – the service worked well and saved Mayer time and money. But that company was sold to a larger corporation, which decided to cut smaller customers out of the mix, including …