A young SA company looks beyond the stale black-and-white invoice, payslip and statement to their real potential as an interactive branding, educational and employee self-service tool A PAYSLIP is just a payslip. Or so you thought. One far-sighted company has seen its potential and developed an interactive document that replaces a payslip, drives a company brand and educates the recipient while delivering most of the benefits of self-service at a fraction of the cost.

That company (and product) is InfoSlips, and it was recently named as one of the most promising emerging enterprises in the 2005 Technology Top 100 Awards.

InfoSlips was formed earlier this year by five partners who bought the intellectual property rights to the InfoSlips solution from their (now former) employer, COSA. This came about after Tilos merged with the German firm COSA, which did not view InfoSlips as a core solution. COSA is, however, still a shareholder in the new entity.

InfoSlips CEO Alan Burger, formerly COSA SA`s CTO, explains that the solution was developed by the resolute team during the course of 2004, with the first rollout in January this year.

InfoSlips, which include not only payslips, but also invoices and statements, are different from other electronic billing and payment presentment (EBPP) or information delivery systems in a number of ways, says Burger. They are interactive and engaging and do not just duplicate the paper version, but add value by being highly graphical and providing a lot more information than paper-based documents, he explains.

InfoSlips work offline, meaning they do not require a connection to the Internet to view and interact with their contents. They can, however, be used to drive traffic to the company`s self-service environment.

They also feature a unique personal user key (PUK) system that virtually does away with password management for the customer. InfoSlips further have a feature that guarantees that all past and current InfoSlips can be viewed with the same single password, while still allowing password changes at any stage. Password management also does not require connectivity to the Internet. Further passwords will expire after three tries if somebody attempts to hack into the InfoSlip. A normal InfoSlip usually falls in the 18K to 70K range, ensuring that they do not overwhelm mail systems and networks.

"What`s interesting about our solution is that its an amalgamation of a bunch of existing technologies, such as the cellphone PUK and PIN technologies, zipping and unzipping technology for compression, Advanced Encryption Standard 4 sed by the CIA for example, and Web technology and e-mail. The difference is the knowledge we add, via our partners, to our solution, to offer the most value within a particular vertical."

Infoslips has been targeting the HR, financial services and insurance markets, building up a client list that includes such established corporates as Alexander Forbes" rel=tag>Alexander Forbes, Adcorp, Advtech, Regent, Glenrand, and Hollard Insurance. Microsoft and union Solidarity are also clients.

"We are on the verge of concluding some big deals: one with a major bank and another with a cellular provider," he reveals. "We don`t pretend to know everything about every sector, though. We partner with other companies, offering a solution complementary to our own that is also familiar to that vertical, and use that as an entry point."

InfoSlips has mapped out its immediate future in terms of product enhancements and versions. It plans to extend its product to cellphones in the near future, for example.

"We`ve still got a lot of maturing to do, both in terms of our technology and making our sales processes more replicable," he admits. Fortunately, its success at the TT100 awards will help raise its profile somewhat, both among potential clients and the media. "We will also cautiously begin to look at international markets," says Burger.