AP Automation

30 Jul

Posted at 08:53h in AP Automation, e-invoicing, Electronic Invoicing by
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Question: When is an standard not a standard? Answer: When there’s loads of them. In Europe, there’s more e-invoicing standards than there are languages spoken so, when the EU Commission in it’s draft directive on e-invoicing in public sector calls for more consideration into developing a common standard, is it suggesting we need more? I spoke to Mikkel Hippe Brun, Chief Strategy Officer at Tradeshift, to get his thoughts.

16 Jul

Posted at 10:15h in AP Automation, e-invoicing, Electronic Invoicing by
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There’s a perennial discussion about supplier fees for electronic invoicing. Should there be no fees to suppliers because all of the business benefit is on the buyer’s side of the equation? Should there be at least a small fee to suppliers that reflects the benefits of eliminating postage costs? Or should the fees be akin to purchasing card fees and be proportionate to the value of the invoice? While some see it as an ethical debate, it isn’t. It’s a commercial discussion. Everyone’s in it to make money and the debate is no more than an industry squabble. The fact is, most suppliers see supplier fees as a cost of doing business – you don’t get anything for nothing – and as far as suggesting that suppliers will pass the costs back to the buyer, even a junior procurement professional knows how to mitigate that risk and insist on no increase in pricing. What’s really important is the benefits that are delivered in terms of efficiency. This is one way of looking at it but there is another way and that involves doing the math.

15 Jul

Posted at 07:15h in AP Automation, Procurement Software, Purchase to Pay, Purchase to Pay Process, SaaS by
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I recently made some comments about Basware that were somewhat critical. It was positive, constructive criticism. I wanted to point out that Basware was ideally placed to become a monster. With one of it’s largest competitors sidelined somewhat by their acquisition by SAP, Basware could fall into the trap of becoming complacent – indeed, I have , from personal experience seen hints of this on the horizon. But I overlooked something – something that to an observer from outside of their organization could go unnoticed. It is the astonishing turn-around that Basware has performed, the foresight they have shown making that change and the energy and determination they have exhibited in completing it.

10 Jul

Posted at 09:14h in AP Automation, e-invoicing, Electronic Invoicing, Nipendo, Purchase to Pay by
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This week we’re delighted to welcome a new sponsor, Nipendo, to Purchasing Insight. Nipendo is fairly new on the P2P scene but in the five or so years that they’ve been about they’ve already made quite an impact with an impressive customer list which includes HP, IBM, Motorola, Pfizer and Office Depot. I was excited to speak to Nipendo’s CEO, Eyal Rosenberg,  a couple of weeks ago – I wanted to know what makes Nipendo’s proposition stand out from the crowd. We covered a lot of ground but the thing that stood out for me was the concept of E2E-invoicing. At first, I was a little skeptical but as Eyal explain more, enhancing his explanation with case study examples, the Nipendo vision became clearer.

05 Jul

Posted at 13:23h in AP Automation, Cloud Computing, e-invoicing, Electronic Invoicing, Financial Supply Chain Management, Purchase to Pay Process, Purchasing Card, Supply Chain Finance by
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Sometimes, great ideas just never take off because some prerequisite solution to a problem hasn’t been solved. E-procurement was a great idea in the 1990’s but until the internet was ubiquitous and trusted, it was slow to take off. Looking back, the trust and ubiquity grew quite quickly but in 1996, if we had a crystal ball that said it would take the best part of a decade to become an established way of doing business, I wonder whether we’d have given up. We didn't know that the problem was trust and ubiquity until it was solved.