Electronic document presentment services in the event of a disaster

• US 7,698,151 B2
• Filed: 01/03/2003
• Issued: 04/13/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 03/18/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Bell & Howell LLC (Böwe Systec AG)
• Original Assignee: Bell & Howell Mail and Messaging Technologies Company
• Inventors: Walker, William W., Maselli, Michael J., Sutton, James N. Jr., Gozzo, Francesco, Perry, Emmett M. Jr.
• Primary Examiner(s): Plucinski; Jamisue A
• Application Number:
  US10/335,910
• Publication Number:
  US 20090037762A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,657 Days
• Field of Search: 705/1
• US Class Current: 705/1.1
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 40/00 Finance; Insurance; Tax strategies; Processing of corporate or income taxes
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/40 for recovering from a failure of a protocol instance or entity, e.g. service redundancy protocols, protocol state redundancy or protocol service redirection management of faults, events, alarms or notifications in data switching networks H04L41/06

Abstract

The disaster recovery techniques, for presentment of a company'"'"'s bills, statements or the like, provide electronic document presentment in the event of a disaster that impacts the company'"'"'s print mail delivery operation or other existing mailing system(s). Files containing electronic documents are received, from a system associated with the print mail delivery operation, and the documents are stored in a database. Preferably, the systems use the company'"'"'s existing data files. The files may be converted to a format compatible with one or more electronic delivery methodologies, if necessary. The disaster recovery systems present notice and/or data from the documents to the company'"'"'s customers electronically, for example as e-mail (notice or message containing some or all of the document data), as a document attachment to an e-mail, via a web site, and possibly via telephone voice announcement.

Claims

1. An electronic presentment method, for recovery from a disaster effecting a print mail operation, the method comprising steps of:

confirming the occurrence of the disaster which interrupts or impairs normal print mail operation;

receiving files containing electronic documents, corresponding to a hardcopy of the documents that would be produced by the print mail operation for delivery;

storing the electronic documents in a format corresponding to a hardcopy of the documents that would be produced by the print mail operation for delivery;

identifying intended recipients of the electronic documents from the received files;

transmitting a notification message through a communication network to the identified intended recipients that the disaster has impaired the print mail operation from producing or delivering the hardcopy documents; and

converting the stored electronic documents into a format capable of presenting the stored electronic documents to the identified intended recipients via a communication network, in response to the disaster impairing the print mail operation from producing or delivering the hardcopy documents.

2. The electronic presentment method as in claim 1, further comprising providing notice to a party associated with the print mail operation if a file is received that can not be processed for storage or for presentment via the network.

3. The electronic presentment method as in claim 1, wherein:

the received files are in one or more of a plurality of legacy formats for driving printers or mail equipment of said print mail operation to generate or send the documents in hardcopy form, and

the files are received from a company generating or sending hard copies of the documents using the print mail operation.

4. The electronic presentment method as in claim 3, further comprising validating converted files before storage.

5. The electronic presentment method as in claim 4, further comprising providing notice to a party associated with the print mail operation if a file is received that can not be validly converted to the standard format for facilitating communication via the network.

6. The electronic presentment method as in claim 1, further comprising the step of parsing the stored electronic documents and transmitting the parsed documents to the identified intended recipients via the communication network.

7. The electronic presentment method as in claim 6, wherein the parsed documents comprise summary data mapped from respective electronic documents.

8. The electronic presentment method as in claim 6, wherein the parsed documents comprise detail data mapped from respective electronic documents.

9. The electronic presentment method as in claim 1, further comprising the step of presenting copies of the converted electronic documents to the identified intended recipients via the communication network.

10. The electronic presentment method as in claim 9, wherein the step of presenting data comprises transmitting notification messages through the communication network to the identified intended recipients.

11. The electronic presentment method as in claim 10, wherein the notification messages comprise messages in at least one form selected from the group consisting essentially of:

e-mail, facsimile and telephone messages.

12. The electronic presentment method as in claim 10, wherein the step of presenting data further comprises making at least some data from the stored electronic documents available to the identified intended recipients via a communication network.

13. The electronic presentment method as in claim 9, wherein the step of presenting data comprises making data from the documents available to each of the identified intended recipients in at least one form selected from the group consisting essentially of:

e-mail presentment via a data network, web page presentment via the data network, and voice response presentment of audio via a telephone network.

14. The electronic presentment method as in claim 9, wherein the step of presenting data comprises:

converting the data from a received format to a format compatible with web communication via the Internet; and

presenting the converted data as web communications via the Internet.

15. The electronic presentment method as in claim 1, further comprising providing at least one electronic payment option to one or more of the identified intended recipients, to pay money via the communication network responsive to the presented data.

16. The electronic presentment method as in claim 1, further comprising providing support service access regarding operations of the method, for a customer service representative associated with the print mail operation.

17. A system for recovery from a disaster effecting a print mail operation, the system comprising:

a communication link for receiving files containing electronic documents corresponding to a hardcopy of the electronic documents that would be produced from a system associated with the print mail operation; and

at least one programmed computer configured to perform the steps of;

confirming the occurrence of the disaster which interrupts or impairs normal print mail operation;

receiving the files containing the electronic documents, corresponding to the hardcopy of the documents that would be produced by the print mail operation for delivery;

storing the electronic documents in a format corresponding to a hardcopy of the documents that would be produced by the print mail operation for delivery;

identifying intended recipients of the electronic documents from the received files;

transmitting a notification message through a communication network to the identified intended recipients that the disaster has impaired the print mail operation from producing or delivering the hardcopy documents; and

converting the electronic documents into a format capable of electronic presentment, and for presenting at least some of the converted electronic documents to intended recipients via a communication network, in response to a system generated disaster notification, the disaster impairing the print mail operation from producing or delivering the hardcopy documents.

18. The system of claim 17, wherein the at least one programmed computer system comprises an e-mail server for communication via a data network.

19. The system of claim 18, wherein the e-mail server sends notification to the intended recipients of availability of data from the stored electronic documents, upon occurrence of a disaster effecting the print mail operation.

20. The system of claim 18, wherein the e-mail server sends a message containing data from a stored electronic document to at least one of the intended recipients.

21. The system of claim 18, wherein the e-mail server sends a message with an attached copy of one of the stored electronic documents to at least one of the intended recipients.

22. The system of claim 17, wherein the at least one programmed computer system comprises a web server for presenting pages containing the data related to the stored electronic documents to the intended recipients via the Internet.

23. The system of claim 17, wherein the at least one programmed computer system comprises a voice response unit for sending the data related to the stored electronic documents to the intended recipients via a telephone network.

24. The system of claim 17, wherein the at least one programmed computer system comprises one or both of the following:

an e-mail server for sending notification to the intended recipients of availability of the data from the stored electronic documents, via a data network;

or

a web server for presenting pages containing the data from at least some of the stored electronic documents to the intended recipients via the data network.

25. The system of claim 24, wherein the at least one programmed computer system further comprises a voice response unit for sending data related to at least some of the stored electronic documents to the intended recipients via a telephone network.

26. The system as in claim 17, wherein:

the received files are in one or more of a plurality of legacy formats for driving printers or mail equipment of said print mail operation to generate or send the documents in hardcopy form, and

the files are received from a company generating or sending hard copies of the documents using the print mail operation.

27. An electronic presentment method, for recovery from a disaster effecting a print mail operation, the method comprising steps of:

confirming the occurrence of the disaster which interrupts or impairs normal print mail operation;

receiving files containing electronic documents, corresponding to a hardcopy of the electronic documents that would be produced by the print mail operation;

storing the electronic documents in a format corresponding to a hardcopy of the documents that would be produced by the print mail operation;

identifying an intended recipient of one of the electronic documents;

automatically transmitting a notification message through a communication network to the identified intended recipient, in response to the disaster impairing the print mail operation from producing or delivering the hardcopy documents; and

making at least some data from the one stored electronic document electronically available to the identified intended recipient, wherein the available data is converted into a format capable of presenting the stored electronic document to the identified intended recipient when accessed by the identified intended recipient.

28. The method of claim 27, wherein the step of making at least some data electronically available comprises providing web-access to the data, for the identified intended recipient, via the Internet.

29. The method of claim 27, wherein the step of making at least some data electronically available comprises sending the data to the identified intended recipient as audible speech representations of the data, via a telephone network.

30. The method of claim 27, wherein the notification message is of a type selected from the group consisting essentially of:

e-mail, facsimile and telephone message.

31. The electronic presentment method as in claim 27, wherein:

the received files are in one or more of a plurality of legacy formats for driving printers or mail equipment of said print mail operation to generate or send the documents in hardcopy form, and

the files are received from a company generating or sending hard copies of the documents using the print mail operation.

32. A program product, comprising a physical machine-readable storage medium and executable code embodied in the medium, wherein execution of the code by at least one programmable computer causes the at least one programmable computer to perform the sequence of steps, comprising:

confirming the occurrence of the disaster which interrupts or impairs normal print mail operation;

receiving files containing electronic documents, corresponding to a hardcopy of the electronic documents that would be produced by a mail delivery operation;

storing the electronic documents within the at least one programmable computer in a format corresponding to a hardcopy of the documents that would be produced by the mail delivery operation;

identifying one or more intended recipients of the electronic documents from the received files;

transmitting a notification message through a communication network to the identified intended recipients that the disaster has impaired the print mail operation from producing or delivering the hardcopy documents; and

converting the stored electronic documents into a format capable of presenting the stored electronic documents to the identified intended recipients via a communication network, in response to a disaster impairing the print mail operation from producing or delivering the hardcopy documents.

33. The program product of claim 32, wherein:

the received files are in one or more of a plurality of legacy formats for driving printers or mail equipment of said print mail operation to generate or send the documents in hardcopy form, and

the files are received from a company generating or sending hard copies of the documents using the print mail operation.

34. A program product, comprising a physical machine-readable storage medium and executable code embodied in the medium, wherein execution of the code by at least one programmable computer causes the at least one programmable computer to perform the sequence of steps, comprising:

confirming the occurrence of the disaster which interrupts or impairs normal print mail operation;

receiving files containing electronic documents, corresponding to a hardcopy of the electronic documents that would be produced by a print mail operation;

storing the electronic documents within the at least one programmable computer in a format corresponding to a hardcopy of the documents that would be produced by the print mail operation;

identifying an intended recipient of one of the electronic documents;

automatically transmitting a notification message through a communication network to the identified intended recipient, in response to a disaster impairing the print mail operation from producing or delivering the hardcopy documents; and

making at least some data from the one stored electronic document electronically available to the identified intended recipient, wherein the available data is converted into a format capable of presenting the stored electronic document to the identified intended recipient when accessed by the identified intended recipient.

35. The program product of claim 34, wherein:

the received files are in one or more of a plurality of legacy formats for driving printers or mail equipment of said print mail operation to generate or send the documents in hardcopy form, and

the files are received from a company generating or sending hard copies of the documents using the print mail operation.