5th European EXPP Summit - E-Invoicing & E-Billing - September 21 and 22,2009
Top-notch speakers from BT Global Services, the Danish Government, the Euro Banking Association, Kuoni Travel, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Telenor, Wärtsilä Corporation, Indicium Solutions, Albalia Interactiva and many more will talk about their experiences with E-Invoicing projects. They will also give participants the most important advice for a successful implementation of E-Invoicing. The role of banks, but also the importance of business networks for quick market acceptance of E-Invoicing, will be discussed. Global Shared Services strategies are on the agenda, as well as a look at the rapidly growing E-Invoicing market in Latin America. A pilot project of the European Commission on E-Invoicing and E-Ordering in the public sector will be presented from the point of view of the Commission and a supplier.
Tags: ExPP Summit
Introducing category for EIPP at edocr.com
edocr.com recently introduced Categories in addition to Tags. Categories allow your documents to be found easily by others, and can be accessed through http://www.edocr.com/explore
Those who have already uploaded documents to edocr:
1. Log into www.edocr.com
2. Access your account and then applicable documents
3. Select EDIT button and assign your documents to category EIPP
There are currently 119 documents tagged EIPP on edocr.com . If you wish to see the documents already assigned with EIPP as their category:
1. Visit http://www.edocr.com/explore
2. Select Business Solutions
3. Scroll down to select EIPP
When you upload new documents, please select EIPP as category from the upload screen.
Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have queries about categories or any other aspect of edocr.com
If you need additional categories, just let me know.
Founder’s Blog - Flint from BillTrust
I introduced e-invoicing/EIPP companies in the past, but now, it seems it’s also relevant to introduce blogs, especially those written by founders of EIPP/EBPP companies. If executed properly, founders’ blogs can become indirect marketing channels for the company represented. As a business, either as a customer or supplier, it helps if you could understand a fraction of what’s your partner’s CxO thinks. This allows you to build relevance to your next conversation. Overtime the blog will strengthen the partnership. On the other hand, if the blogger writes purely about how great the company, products and services are, it will attract less audience. Achieving a balance of writing about your company, the industry and customer pain is key to success. In addition, as many millions blog these days, you need to have a clear strategy of what you intend to achieve through your blog as well as how you plan to market it.
In Flint’s case, he reached out to me through LinkedIn and here I am writing about him, his company and his blog (free of charge marketing). I personally do not know Flint and only came across him today due to LinkedIn request. So here is an extract from his website:
Flint is responsible for setting the strategic direction and managing the day-to-day activities for Billtrust. Prior to founding Billtrust, Mr. Lane was founder, President and Chairman of Paytrust, the leading electronic bill presentation and payment (EBPP) company with over 100,000 customers nationwide. Prior to founding Paytrust, Mr. Lane served in executive positions at various software companies including Platinum Technology, Logic Works and BrownStone Solutions. Mr. Lane received his Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
According to the website, BillTrust claims that they are the billing experts. The outsourced billing service, CompleteBilling includes U.S. mail billing, fax billing, email billing, hosted online billing (EBPP & EIPP) and a web-based bill archiving and customer service tool, CustomerCare.
Here are couple of documents I scraped from the Internet and uploaded to edocr:
Flint has started his blog on 12 March 2008 asking "Does the world really need another blog?" Flint claims that his blog would be the first blog by a CEO of a billing company. I have no evidence to dispute his claim from a billing (EBPP) perspective. I believe I was the first CEO of an e-invoicing (EIPP) company to blog.
I would recommend you read Flint’s introductory blog post first, as he lay down his credentials. That alone is sufficient for me to consider that Flint is a chap worth knowing. I leave you to draw your own conclusions.
Feel free to follow me on twitter and most of all, upload all your pdfs to edocr to start document interaction today.
Resources:
- All documents on BillTrust
- All documents on EBPP
- All documents on EIPP and e-invoicing
Note: if you do not tag, there is a less chance of your documents being found.
EGS Group starts blogging to promote e-invoicing and spend management
Blogging has come a long way since I wrote my first blog post in April 2006 to promote my e-invoicing startup, ebdex. Blogging is now a well acknowledged tool of marketing, even within the e-invoicing market segment. The latest to start a blog is EGS Group. OB10 and others are yet to follow, but Accountis has been blogging for well over 2 years. In fact, technically, Accountis started blogging before me (Accountis: 29/03/06 - I:09/04/06). Other innovative companies in this space includes Ariba, who eventually bought Supply Excellence, a blog written by Tim Minahan as part of the acquisition of Procuri. Tim continues to blog at Supply Excellence with Justin Fogarty as Managing Editor.
Just like many companies in this market segment, EGS automate and streamline entire P2P (Purchase-to-Pay) lifecycle. It is claimed that more than 40,000 users across 150 organisations use EGS products. Here are two documents that EIPPWorld uploaded to edocr for interaction.
Unfortunately, EGS is making a mistake by not disclosing the names of bloggers. At present, there are four articles with one comment. And their response was simply referring the individual to their website - not much of an interaction. Long way to go for these chaps to get it right. But congratulations for taking the first step.
Tags: EGS, EIPP, e-Invoicing, einvoicing
Press Release: GlobalSign solution combines Digital ID and high volume timestamping solution
Leuven, Belgium (PRWeb) December 8, 2008 — GlobalSign, one of the longest established Certification Authorities (CA) and specialists in SSL Certificates and Digital Identities for securing PDF documents, has today announced the success of the Antwerp Port Authority project, designed to meet the requirements of Circulaire nr AOIF 16/2008 (E.T.112.081) for the creation and retention of e-invoices. In January 2004 the European Directive on invoicing (EC/115/2001) came into effect with 25 European member states, including Belgium, implementing the directive into their local VAT legislation; the resultant Circulaire was released in Belgium on the 13th May 2008.
Tags: e-invoicing, eVAT
Bruno’s e-invoicing newsletter Dec 2008
1. EC: Prototype IDABC eInvoicing and eOrdering project ready
The European Commission IDABC eInvoicing and eOrdering project team has recently reached an important milestone: the delivery of the prototype. It allows the sending of an XML invoice to the Commission’s e-PRIOR system and the automatic integration in the back-office system after a number of validations. The major next step is a real-life pilot with a number of IT suppliers.
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2. b-process announced a strategic agreement with ASCS
b-process’ electronic invoice platform was selected following the completion of a rigorous tender process by Accenture Supply Chain Services (ASCS), designed to select a platform and support capable of providing tax-compliant e-invoicing services across the globe which is also tailored to meet country specific legal requirement.
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3. Basware and OB10 form global partnership to streamline the invoicing process
The partnership enables Basware’s customers to benefit from OB10’s best practice supplier enrolment. With the partnership, Basware’s customers will be able to receive electronic invoices from their suppliers via OB10, further extending the global reach of the Basware supplier network.
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4. Banks taking responsibility – SWIFT committed
SWIFT has now published a report saying in essence that 28 out of 29 banks replying to questionnaire have already launched e-invoicing or plan to do so. Networking model naturally needed - to get volumes.
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5. Intelligent PDF: removing barriers?
Adobe presented its intelligent PDF eInvoicing solution in a white paper. Adobe proposes an end-to-end approach in which the E-Invoice is interpretable by both humans and computer systems. This approach is based on the eInvoicing processes as described by the CEN/ISSS Workshop on Compliance of E-Invoices and is expected to be compliant with EU and respective national VAT regulations.
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6. 2009: European EXPP Summit and Operators Forum
The next European EXPP Summit will take place on September 21 & 22, 2009, in Amsterdam / The Netherlands. A new brochure for Sponsors is available on www.expp-summit.com/sponsoring
The Operators Forum will follow on September 23 at the same location.
This newsletter is being read in 46 countries, from Chile to Australia and Finland to South Africa. Your colleagues and business partners might also be interested in what this bimonthly newsletter has to say. Please forward it to them or register their names now:
http://www.expp-summit.com/subscribenow.htm
KG Charles-Harris - Consulting light Emanio
KG Charles-Harris giving a profile on Emanio. Key message: consulting light product with quick order to live.
Tags: KG Charles-Harris, Emanio
Jamie Gunn - engages with social media, finally!
I thought it would only be right to publish Jamie Gunn’s, CEO of OB10’s respond to my recent article in here, as he commented at edocr. Jamie has long resisted the temptation of responding to my various analysis in the past, and I am glad he finally step in to correct some of the mistakes I have made in my analysis. I am hoping that other CEOs and Senior Management will also start to engage with socia media more often than in the past, learning from Jamie’s engagement process.
Whilst bloggers cannot make or break companies, they can seriously cause damage to brands. Companies such as SAP embraced bloggers early to understand the new wave of journalism (anyone can be a journalist as long as there are readers) and to be part of it instead of taking defensive actions. Corporate blogging no longer raises eyebrows due to champions such as Jonathan Schwartz, CEO of Sun Microsystems. But most companies are slow to understand the need for engagement through blogging. One company that setup a blog early in the process is Accountis. However, they themselves have not manage to embrace the concept fully. Just like any other media, blogging is only effective when the conversations take place in both directions. This blog along contains 267 posts with 213 comments.
It is also wrong for me to compare my analysis with those of Gartner, Forrester and Aberdeen Group. They have reputations to protect and most of their income come from sponsorship from companies that are featured in their reports (I am not suggesting that OB10 was featured because they paid money - rather that is one way to ensure correct messages are conveyed to the public). It is better to compare my analysis with new Champions such as James Governor of Redmonk. At the end of the day, it is about reputation management, or brand management. Engaging with bloggers as a defensive measure is never a good idea. I am happy to discuss this aspect off-line if that helps.
Without further diluting the topic, here is Jamie’s response.
Dear Manoj,
At OB10 we appreciate your ongoing enthusiasm for the company and recognise that you are basically a fan, not a critic.
In your most recent blog entry you have gone out of your way to recognise the poineering role that OB10 has played and you rightly point out the dangers of being acquired by a large multinational and subsequently disappearing inside it.
Over recent years you have written several times about OB10, and whilst a lot of it has been speculative and wide of the mark, we didn’t consider responding as we have never wanted to get drawn into unnecessary public debate. Our focus is on growing OB10 for the benefit of our customers and shareholders.
However on this occasion I need to respond, to correct a number of seriously misleading and dangerous comments that you have made, which will be read by prospects in what is an increasingly buoyant market.
We have talked before about the need to blog responsibly. While everyone is entitled to their opinions, I would much rather that prospects, VC’s and journalists read reports from knowledgeable analysts such as Forrester and Gartner, or read the detailed Directors Report on Activities provided in the accounts which we recently filed at Companies House, about whose results you have written in your blog. I would direct anyone who reads this piece to those sources.
Forrester has recently written two excellent reports on the EIPP space, the second "Wave" report giving their rating of a number of major vendors, including the views of their customers, so your contention that
"Forrester and Aberdeen Group’s reports are great but they do not ever try to scrutinise vendors" is way wide of the mark!To some of the specific points then: while we were pleased with last year’s growth, we are only at the beginning of the journey, and our revenue run rate (never mind our new billings) is already way ahead of that published at Companies House for the year to April 30th 2008..
You incorrectly referenced the departure of two key founders which you have since retracted, but the more important point to make is that OB10 has very successfully grown its business globally from its small origins with all of its founders and other key early contributors still fully committed and integral to the company’s future. This is a testimony to Stefan, Chris and John, but also to all of the more recent key senior players who have been able to develop strong working bonds across geographies and functional disciplines.
You worry about our expense growth and lack of profitability, but our expense growth has been investment in increasing our geographic footprint, in developing our third stage technology platforms, in expanding our service portfolio and developing our worldwide talent pool. As to profitability, while our reported results show losses, our ongoing business is already substantially profitable (as in seven figures before the decimal point), with most of our resources being devoted to winning new business, onboarding suppliers and servicing our customers.
We have never yet lost a contract because of financial viability, even despite the quality and size of our typical customers.
With regard to the patience of our investors, this is simply not an issue. On the contrary, they are delighted with progress and have continued to support us as and when needed. The picture you paint of me running around the City with a begging bowl rather than running the business is hilarious! Every funding round over the past three years has been oversubscribed by our internal investors - we are already well funded through breakeven, and myself plus the rest of the management team can get on with the job in hand.
I appreciate that those who write about these things love to speculate about ownership changes,what we might or might not do and whether we have enough funding, but the truth of it is that our strategy is clearly defined, our growth rate in line with our plans and our shareholders fully supportive with others warmed up and ready if necessary, should we choose to expand further and faster.
So I hope these comments are helpful to you and your readership. I think it would be very difficult for anyone to glean much about OB10’s performance by simply applying traditional financial ratio analysis on summary published accounts, which is why the Directors chose to include a weighty commentary this time around, but you clearly have every right to attempt to do so!
With good wishes.
Jamie Gunn, CEO OB10
Tags: Jamie Gunn, OB10, e-invoicing, EIPP
2008-10-06: EIPP News across the world
E-invoicing gains popularity in Estonia (Estonia) - According to Statistics Estonia, in January 2008 four out of ten enterprises with Internet connection had received e-invoices, three out of ten had sent out e-invoices. In the previous year the corresponding indicators were two out of ten and one out of ten.
Increasing confidence in eInvoicing (Hungary) - The popularity of online payments for utility bills (electricity, gas, water) is increasing in Hungary since the launch of a new eInvoicing service last year by the Díjbeszed? Holding (Utility Fee Collection Holding), despite a persisting reticence to change.
Accountis Interviewed by Finextra Research
Above shows a video interview of Ifor Williams of Accountis by Finextra Research. Ifor speaks about how the industry is getting more focused on the environmental benefits of embracing e-invoicing, amidst a wider trend to take corporate social responsibility more seriously.
