doxo Set to Break Barriers to Paperless Adoption
doxo today announced that it is readying a new online service that enables people and providers to connect and go paperless. Backed with funding from Mohr Davidow Ventures and Bezos Expeditions, doxo will provide a unique channel that promises to revolutionize paperless transactional mail adoption, saving providers billions of dollars in printing, paper and production costs, improving customer satisfaction, and reducing environmental waste.
The Series A investment of $5.25 million is aiding the company’s expansion and private trials with some of the largest U.S. utility, insurance, banking, Internet, satellite, phone, travel and cable providers.
“Closing what we call the ‘paperless adoption gap,’ is a massive market opportunity,” said Steve Shivers, doxo co-founder and CEO. “Based on comparable online metrics, paperless adoption can and should be at least four or five times higher than current levels cited. For customers, all this paper mail is a big headache. For businesses, it’s an enormous wasted expense. Adoption is lagging so dramatically because clear, straightforward customer needs aren’t being met. doxo is out to remedy that.”
Each year in the U.S., more than 55 billion transactional documents – bills, statements, notifications, policy updates, and other critical documents – are delivered between businesses and their customers. Despite years of effort to get customers to “turn off” paper, only about 12 percent of this document volume is delivered exclusively in electronic format today.
Just the direct expense of paper, printing and postage for transactional mail costs businesses more than $35 billion each year. doxo is complementary to paperless channels in use already and delivers immediate savings to businesses of 80 percent or more over paper mail.
“Despite the best efforts for paperless adoption by many corporations, there appears to be a cap on adoption,” said Marc DeCastro, research manager at leading IT market research advisory firm IDC Financial Insights. “For the enterprise, they want a new approach that will save money and drive greater customer adoption and interaction. For the consumer, they want a simplified process without having to manage or share login credentials across multiple web sites.”
“One of the key challenges in online bill pay is that these online transactions are often preceded by the creation of a paper bill,” said Andy Schmidt, research director for global payments at Tower Group. “Enterprises looking to save money, drive greater customer interaction, and create greater customer stickiness need to fully move away from paper transactions and create a simpler billpay experience for consumers.”
In addition to the tremendous economic expense, the massive volume of transactional mail creates enormous environmental waste. A 30 percent increase in paperless adoption of transactional documents would save at least three million trees, over 150 million gallons of gas, and eliminate more than three million tons of greenhouse gasses every year. Going paperless is one of the most practical and impactful ways to benefit the environment, and the doxo approach makes it much easier for customers and businesses.
“By applying ingenuity to what has been an ongoing and costly challenge for businesses, doxo will provide dramatic and immediate benefits to its customers,” said David Feinleib, Partner at Mohr Davidow Ventures. “The doxo team has a proven ability to deliver large, scalable systems; and it’s doing so with a smart business model. It’s a winning combination.”
doxo’s founding executive team has deep roots in consumer innovation and strong transactional experience. doxo was founded by former Qpass executives that helped develop the company’s technology platform and drove adoption to achieve more than $2 billion of consumer mobile and Internet commerce transactions. In addition to Shivers, Roger Parks serves as its Vice President of Business Development and Mark Goris as its Vice President of Technology.
doxo is currently in private trials with a select group of enterprise customers as it works toward full commercial availability of the service. Learn more at www.doxo.com.
About doxo
doxo is pioneering the way for people and providers to connect and go paperless, breaking customer adoption barriers and saving businesses billions of dollars in printing, paper and postage costs. The company is currently piloting its offering with national and regional service providers, as it works toward full commercial availability. doxo investors include top-tier venture partners Mohr Davidow Ventures and Bezos Expeditions. The company is led by executives who have driven businesses that processed billions of dollars in consumer mobile and Internet transactions. doxo is headquartered in Seattle, Washington.