GTE makes electronic billing and analysis easy for business customers with introduction of E.Solutions

IRVING, Texas -- Time is money, and GTE Telephone Operations plans to help its customers save both with the introduction of E.Solutions, a PC-based and Windows-compatible, electronic billing and analysis package. Available now in three delivery options -- diskette, CD-ROM and electronic data interchange (EDI) over a value-added network -- E.Solutions eliminates the need for companies to sort through mounds of paper bills each month.

Featuring point-and-click commands, E.Solutions allows customers to perform critical bill-analysis functions more easily and to quickly manipulate and reformat their GTE bills, said Lonnie Laue, GTE's manager of Electronic Data Interchange.

"Receiving a telephone bill electronically will enable our customers to identify problem areas such as fraudulent calls in seconds, instead of the days it took with paper bills," said Laue. "Users will appreciate the ability to customize their data by adding information unique to their business for internal rebilling or cost tracking. For example, a retail chain might create a column in which to associate each charge with a store number or name."

GTE's electronic management tool provides standard and customized billing reports such as local and long-distance call details, summary account totals, service and rate changes, and monetary transactions. In addition,

E.Solutions calculates year-to-date expenses by department or account, and rapidly generates quarterly and annual billing reports.

"E.Solutions makes it easier to track phone calls, evaluate calling patterns, compare departmental expenses for long-distance calls and identify unauthorized usage," said Laue.

He said that the management tool "was developed as part of GTE's process reengineering efforts, and supports our pledge of being the easiest company to do business with in the industry."

From the E.Solutions menu, customers can choose from various options that allow them to search for specific data, sort any field in ascending or descending order, total long columns of data and merge selected information to compare current and historical data. In addition, E.Solutions enables customers to export data to other spreadsheets and database applications, freeing up managers from entering billing information into separate software programs.

Once customers choose to receive their bills electronically, they will continue to receive both paper and electronic bills for up to 90 days to ensure a smooth transition.

The diskette and CD-ROM versions of the E.Solutions software cost $495 each with a $100 annual upgrade charge. The electronic file transfer version of the software using EDI costs $595 with an annual upgrade fee of $300. E.Solutions can also be installed on a single work station, or on a local area network that allows more than one person to simultaneously access the billing analysis database. To order, customers can call 1-800-GTE-4WCN or

1-800-483-4926.

GTE Telephone Operations is the largest U.S.-based local telephone company, providing voice, video and data products and services through more than 23 million access lines in portions of the United States, Canada, South America, the Caribbean and the Pacific. Its parent organization, GTE Corporation, is the fourth-largest publicly owned telecommunications company in the world.