OUTSOURCING THE BILLS.

XEROX'S CORPORATE MAKE-over from stodgy copier company to savvy information manager extends to Latin America, where the U.S. firm has signed outsourcing agreements with some large companies in Argentina and Brazil. Brazil's Unibanco and Safra banks, along with Argentine telephone companies Telefonica de Argentina and Movicom, among others, have bought into Xerox's Xpress billing service. The clients supply their billing information, while Xerox gets the paper, designs the invoice and prints and delivers them to hundreds of thousands of customers. * Xerox started peddling the service last year as part of a worldwide push to reinvent itself for the electronic age. Enrique Sibella, the company's Argentina marketing manager, claims Xpress cuts the billing cycle in half, meaning the firms get paid faster. * Getting paid at all is an issue, especially in the burgeoning telecom sector. Privatized phone companies are growing so fast that many billing departments are unable to keep up with the fast pace of client grow th. In Peru, cellular provider Tele2000, owned by BellSouth, turned to Western Union to help collect payments after late-paying clients deluged local TeIe2000 offices. * IBM and Siemens are getting in on the collections business, too, with Argentina's Edesur power company taking on IBM last June. * Getting the bills out can be complicated. Telefonica de Argentina must print and send as many as 13 million sheets of paper per month. It previously contracted different companies to supply paper, print copies, and supply software programs for graphics and data storage. Xerox employs its own software and equipment and takes care of the logistics, leaving Telefonica free to work the phones.