A new survey has shown that the drive for e-invoicing is picking up momentum, with over 70% of respondents across multiple industry sectors recognising the technology as being key to boosting efficiency and adding value in finance departments. 

Aberdeen Research shows that 75% of businesses still process invoices manually, and that for these organisations invoice costs can range as high as €1.29 per invoice –meaning significant extra annual costs for firms handling high invoice volumes.  It’s calculated that an organisation that processes 6,000 paper-based customer invoices per month can save up to €76,000 a year by moving to e-invoicing. 

The fullstory is here:  http://www.sharedserviceslink.com/file/95795/new-survey-reveals-accelerating-demand-for-electronic-invoicing.html

A new report from TechNavio's analysts indicate that the global E-invoicing market isset to grow at a rate of over 24% per year to 2016, driven by the business demands to automate invoicing processes and reduce overall operationalc osts.   

The reporthighlights that e-invoicing and automation technology is being increasingly adopted by SMEs, and notes that but for concerns about the complexity involved in deploying these solutions, growth could be even higher. 

As we’ve blogged before, we believe that cloud solutions like the PaletteOnline family could help to address these concerns, by enabling companies of any size to deploy invoice automation with zero disruption and minimal set-up. TechNavio's report, the Global E-invoicing Market 2012-2016, is available from here:  http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/dfzxtn/global

Our latest article from Palette Sales Director Lucy Beck has been published on the business news portal, BDaily.  In ‘Making Painless Paper Cuts’ Lucydiscusses how businesses can benefit from cloud applications in theirday-to-day operations, and use them to migrate from paper-based invoicing to boost efficiency.

The article focuses on the ways in which automated invoice processing solutions can cut paper and deliver savings, and highlights the advantages of new, cloud-based financial automation applications. Lucy also discusses how companies can quickly benefit from the flexible infrastructure of cloud applications and pay-as-you-go pricing.

You can read ‘Making Painless Paper Cuts’ here:  http://bdaily.co.uk/opinion/21-03-2013/making-painless-paper-cuts/

Over at sharedserviceslink.com, there are some interesting findings from the organisation’s Accounts Payable Tech and e-Invoicing Summit, held last month (December 2012).  Members were surveyed to find out what were their thoughts and plans were for using automation technologies in the finance shared services arena.

A majority of members were already using e-invoicing (63%), some form of OCR technology (67%), and automated work-flow (59%). Members were also asked about their interest and plans to use cloud technology – some 15% showed interest in this. This is no surprise to us:  as we’ve mentioned before, our cloud offering, PaletteOnline, is being embraced by both existing and new Palette customers, because of its easy set-up, flexibility, low cost of deployment and manageable running costs.   In the coming weeks we will have news of several significant PaletteOnline deployments and partnerships.

In the meantime, you can find more detail about sharedserviceslink.com’s research here:  http://www.sharedserviceslink.com/file/95582/what-are-your-new-year-accounts-payable-technology-resolutions.html

At a recent US summit for leaders in finance, Adam Goldberg, Executive Architect from theUS Treasury, observed in a session that the Treasury had already saved a total of $450 million since implementing e-invoicing in 2007, or an average of some $90M per year. 

Even with these savings, it’s interesting to think that savings could be even higher if every supplier to the Treasury used e-invoicing.  But how should suppliers be incentivised to use e-invoicing?  And should it simply be mandatory? 

This post on sharedserviceslink.com, the host of the summit meeting, looks at some of the issues involved in roll-out of e-invoicing, and makes practical suggestions to help companies negotiate with their partners.  It’s well worth a read,at: 

http://www.sharedserviceslink.com/file/95431/mandatory-vs-non-mandatory-einvoicing-what-works-best-for-you-and-your-suppliers.html

We’ve blogged before on the uptake of e-invoicing within the EU, and its popularity looks set to increase following reports that the European Commission has stepped up its campaign to standardize processes for public procurement projects.  
Last week, the European Commission announced plans to drive e-invoicing across the EU via a three-tiered method that would require all public procurement projects to usee-invoicing, and harmonize online payments throughout the European Union. The Commission’s plan also incorporates improvements to the coordination of infrastructure works required for the roll out of high-speed Internet.

While some countries have already seen various industry attempts at technical standardization, the Commission argues that such efforts are ‘scarce and scattered’. With a lack of incentive, and ineffective competition in some areas of Internet payments, many companies have simply ignored the opportunities that advances in technology can offer.

To combat the situation, the Commission aims to combine practical action with the introduction of new legislation, namely the proposed revision of the Payment Services Directive and full implementation of the Services Directive.   Ultimately, it is hoped that by setting e-invoicing as the standard mode for public procurement, the public sector will be viewed as a ‘lead market’ and encourage other sectors to follow suit. 

You can read more about the EU’s latest e-invoicing developments here: 
http://www.sharedserviceslink.com/file/95378/eu-takes-three-pronged-approach-to-encourage-einvoicing.html

We’veblogged before about the uptake of e-invoicing in different EU countries. Two new surveys from Spain indicate that the country is embracing thetechnology closely.   

The SpanishNational Association of Internet Companies (ANEI) recently found that 75% ofall Spanish companies receive invoices in a format other than paper.  Themost popular e-invoicing formats are PDF (71.7%) and Excel (15%) files. The survey also found that e-mail is the dominant format for e-invoicing, with78.3% of respondents using it.

Inaddition, Red.es, a public corporate entity attached to the Ministry ofIndustry, Energy and Tourism, conducts an annual survey aimed at measuring theprogress of the Information Society in Spain. The survey’s 2012 edition showsthat e-invoicing is done by 60.4% of companies with more than 250 employees,53% of companies with 50-249 employees, 41.1% of companies with 10-49 employeesand 19% of micro-companies. 

OK, in manycases and for many companies, e-invoicing means simply sending a document byemail, but it’s still a key step towards invoice automation.  There’s more information here:  http://eeiplatform.com/9757/pdf-image-e-invoices-dont-allow-automated-invoice-processing-stone-age-anyone/

Eight Chinese government agencies have announced a series of measures to promote e-commerce and e-invoicing, including setting up a trial e-invoice system with online payment standards.  The Chinese government is moving towards e-invoicing as its research has shown that e-invoice adoption has grown by 40%, and that the e-invoice system could deliver up to 80% savings compared with traditional paper invoices. 

As well as being another clear sign of China opening its doors to international markets, it’s also a portent of the growing global e-invoice momentum.  It’s time for all businesses to look at, and accelerate, their e-invoicing plans. 

http://eeiplatform.com/8190/china-issues-guidelines-to-promote-e-commerce-and-e-invoicing/

In April this year, the Austrian Parliament passed a new law which will force any organisation working with the federal Austrian government to use e-invoicing, via a dedicated Government portal. 

The portal will force suppliers to deliver structured e-invoices for all goods or services delivered.  So Austria is joining the growing number of EU Governments mandating the use of e-invoice portals (a move pioneered in Scandinavia). 

One potential issue is that the majority of these portals are proprietary – meaning that different formats may have to be used when dealing with different Governments.  This seems to be in conflict with the upcoming EU e-invoicing directive that is expected to come into effect next year.

It will be interesting to see how these fragmented, country-specific moves to e-invoicing will resolve themselves into more coherent, unified solutions.  But one thing is certain – the drive towards e-invoicing is becoming unstoppable.

There’s more about Austria’s move here: http://eeiplatform.com/7889/austria-mandates-structured-e-invoicing-as-from-1-january-2014/  

Together with the ‘Polish Confederation of private employers and companies’ Orange Poland has created the coalition ‘I choose e-invoicing’ (Wybieram e-fakture), encouraging the country’s companies to move away from the ‘traditional’ paper-based method of sending invoices.  

Orange calculated that if all invoices in Poland were sent electronically, the country would save 340,000 trees from being cut per year. Among the estimated 4 billion invoices sent every year in Poland, at most only 11% are sent electronically.  

Poland is among the last countries in Europe to adopt e-invoicing, highlighting the surge in companies embracing the modern method and its benefits.  Although Poland had a slow take-up because of initial reluctance exhibited by some stakeholders, the initiative has set a clear example of how to achieve e-invoicing, even in the face of adversity.  

It will be interesting to see if other countries follow suit and deploy this coalition approach, to encourage wider adoption of e-invoicing for the benefit of all.

It’s sometimes said that you can gauge the success of a technology or initiative because someone will develop a criminal scam related to it.  Unfortunately, e-invoicing is no exception, according to a report on Shared Services Link:  http://www.sharedserviceslink.com/file/94374/einvoice-scam-uncovered.html

It reports  that networking company Cisco’s Security Intelligence Operations has detected "significant activity" related to spam email messages claiming to contain electronic invoices.

Written in Portuguese, the fake invoices direct recipients to .zip files that can infect their computers with virus software related to the Trojan.Win32.Generic family.  Once installed on a user's machine, these download malicious files including a ‘back door’, enabling interrogation from a remote host.

As with any digital transactional system, security is paramount.  This threat should be nullified by updated anti-virus software and firewalls, but it’s certainly worth noting as more organisations move to e-invoicing.

It’s recently been announced that as part of President Obama’s “Campaign to Cut Waste” across the entire federal government, all Treasury Bureaus must implement an e-invoice processing solution by the end of next year, and starting in 2013 commercial vendors must submit their invoices electronically.

To help with fast roll-out, the US Treasury is working together with the Department of Defense to identify a single-entry point for all vendors to go paperless and follow one set of government standards for invoice submission instead of unique requirements for each agency.  The Department of Defense’s solution e-invoicing solution is already used by more than 92,000 vendors to submit more than 7 million invoices a year and is claimed to be saving taxpayers $250 million annually.

The wider Federal initiative is expected to cut costs for the taxpayer by nearly half a billion dollars per year.  Additional advantages are expected to be quicker payments for vendors and greater visibility of invoice statuses through use of online portals.

Although the European Digital Agenda, launched in 2010, has made a real impact in accelerating e-business processes, some countries have fallen well behind others within the EU – especially in areas including e-invoicing.

According to new statistics from the Digital Agenda Scoreboard, the UK trails its EU neighbours, sending and receiving 74% fewer e-invoices than the Union-wide average.  Furthermore, the UK is also 33% below the EU average for implementing electronic supply chain management systems, and use of e-procurement services is 14% below the average.

This is despite an improvement of over 60% in some cases, since 2009.  With the huge efficiencies possible through e-invoicing and e-business – the European Commission has set a target that by 2020 all invoices sent in Europe will be electronic, which would save €240bn within six years – it’s certainly time that some countries caught up! 

http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/2074934/uk-trails-rest-eu-business

Here’s a link to an interesting piece on the Purchasing Insight blog, looking at how the issue of what constitutes ‘true’ e-invoicing can be somewhat confusing.  After all, when does an electronic invoice-related document truly become an e-invoice?  And is the goal of 100% electronic invoicing realistic, or even desirable in reality?  It’s well worth a read.  

Here’s an interesting interview with Liam Mullaney, the MD of Sage Ireland, the leading accounts software company.  He makes a convincing case for companies to adopt e-invoicing.  He points out that the European Commission has set a target that by 2020 all invoices sent in Europe will be electronic - which it says would save Europe €240bn within six years. 

Further, a report by Celtrino estimates that businesses can save up to 2% of their turnover by cutting out paper invoices – which is a handsome ongoing saving.  It’s an interesting read:  http://digital21.ie/news/item/798

Danish high-street bank, Den Danske Bank, has introduced an unusual e-invoicing solution for consumers, to help them pay bills on the move.  The Bank’s customers can now pay bills by simply taking a photo of it using their iPhone or Android smartphone, which then triggers an online payment application.

The app uses OCR to rapidly enter the details for a bill or electronic funds transfer, including the amount due, payee name and account numbers, without demanding that users key in the information by hand.

Of course at Palette, our cloud-based architecture enables AP staff to process invoices anywhere they can get a web connection, and e-invoicing is a goal for many users of our solutions.  It’s interesting to see this technology filtering down to consumers.

Read more

Since 1 January 2011, companies in Holland have been able to submit their invoices to the central government electronically – but it seems that paper invoicing is still the dominant method.  All 78 central government organisations in Holland are poised to move to eInvoicing, handled by Digipoort, the electronic post office of the government. 

"Electronic invoicing is faster, easier and therefore cheaper," said Mr. Verhagen, the Dutch Minister for Economic Affairs, Agriculture and Innovation.  He went on to say that the move is good for taxpayers, and for businesses.   

Minister Verhagen wants all other levels of government (provinces, municipalities) to be ready to receive electronic invoices in 2018.  However, of the 14.4 million invoices sent to government authorities, only 6% were digital and of those, 80% were printed and processed manually.

Read the full story :

We’ve blogged before about the European Commission’s recommendations and priorities for encouraging wider uptake of e-invoicing across EU members.  Scandinavian countries are leading the way in the drive towards the e-invoicing goal, as this article from the UK Financial Times points out. 

The Finnish Government has already told companies that only electronic invoicing is acceptable, according to the country’s communications minister.  And in Sweden and Norway, public organisations impose higher fees for the use of paper invoices in transactions. 

As Bo Harald, the chair of the European Commission expert group on e-invoicing points out:  “Electronic invoicing would be good for productivity, good for the environment and good for the quality of services.”

The European Commission has announced that it wants to see e-invoicing as the predominant method of invoicing in Europe. In its Communication ‘Reaping the benefits of electronic invoicing (e-invoicing) for Europe’, the European Commission identifies a set of tangible actions to make the uptake of e-invoices in Europe easier.

It’s great to see the EU endorsing the benefits that we, and other vendors, have been promoting for many years. The move to e-invoicing will allow businesses to benefit from faster payments, fewer delays and errors, and reduced printing and postage costs. Critically, structured e-invoices facilitate business process integration from purchase to payment, meaning that invoices could be sent, received and processed without manual intervention.

The Commission has decided to set-up a European multi-stakeholder forum on e-invoicing. Michel Barnier, Commissioner for the Internal Market and Services, said “E-invoicing has the potential to make a big difference, for businesses, consumers, and European trade as a whole. The benefits in terms of saving time and money are fully in line with our Europe 2020 strategy and with the Digital Agenda for Europe in particular.”

Links: http://bit.ly/ejvy83 (press release)