e-invoicing

A torrent of tweets amplified one another over the last few weeks about the apparent enormous current interest in e-invoicing in the United States. Apparently, 42% of companies – a sizable proportion by any standard – are evaluating their electronic invoicing options. They were all quoting from the very fine report published recently by PayStream Advisors’ e-invoicing Adoption Benchmarking Report. But unlike the many tweeps who were excited by this, I was a little underwhelmed and in my opinion, there was some much more interesting revelations in the report.

There has been some criticism of OB10's user interface and so their users are likely to be pleased at the announcement today of a new version of their portal which, according to the press release, will "enhance the user experience, bring further efficiencies and transparency to the purchase-to-pay process, and deliver ground-breaking new services."

Last week, I had the great please of speaking to Markus Hornburg, Vice President Product Development & Compliance at OB10, a real expert on e-invoicing compliance, about his views on e-invoicing compliance. I can claim some expertise on e-invoicing but it’s quite humbling when you chat to someone with really deep global expertise on a particular subject. And Markus can claim just that. His experience goes back to the late 1990s when in Switzerland, he played a part in establishing the first electronic invoicing legislation in the world. He's been with OB10 for over 5 years now. I’ve always viewed compliance as being one of OB10’s strength. It was one of the central pillars of the OB10 proposition when they were first founded and so I was interested to hear Markus’ views on the approach that the plethora of newer players take to compliance, on the European Union post 2013 and on the challenges of using e-invoicing globally.

This week I had the privilege to see a demonstration of a technology that is going to fundamentally change accounts payable. Kofax announced the acquisition of Mobiflex in December last year. They announced at the time that this would bring Kofax Capture to remote workers allowing truck drivers, field engineers, architects and insurance claims assessors to capture data from documents in the field. We wrote about it here and I have to confess I was skeptical. But, after seeing the demo, skeptic no more. From an AP automation perspective, Kofax Mobile Capture is even better than even Kofax know. And here’s why.

When Tradeshift launched a couple of years ago, their 'free invoicing' mantra wasn't actually a new idea. Many suppliers were already able to e-invoice for free albeit in a limited way, but Tradeshift made it a bigger deal and they have changed the e-invoicing landscape forever. We'll see more 'free' e-invoicing happen this year - and not just from the smaller players. But just as the electronic invoicing world is coming to terms with the Tradeshift model - they've done it again - this time in a highly original way. This is going to change the rules of the game big time.