e-invoicing

What links the P2P Summit in Vegas later this month and the entrepreneur of the year award? The P2P Summit, (which by the way you should attend – see here) is one of the most important dates in the calendar but, being very honest, I struggled to see the connection between Las Vegas and P2P until I saw the announcement today about the London AIM market entrepreneur of the year award.

This week I had the pleasure to support a seminar session run by Canon promoting their P2P offering. This is the transcript of my presentation P2P has always been important - important in the sense that it has always been important to ensure that the correct approval is given before something is bought. It’s important in the sense that it has always been important to ensure that suppliers are paid according to contractual terms - and important in the sense that it’s important to ensure that the details on an invoice sent by a supplier match what was asked for and what was delivered. But P2P has taken on a greater importance in recent years and there are three things that have put P2P in the spotlight
  • Visibility
  • Accountability
  • Automation

Yesterday, Tradeshift celebrated the opening of their new London offices with a reception in the heart of the financial district of Canary Wharf in London.  Set in Level39, the Fintech community in 1 Canada Square it was an opportunity to see the Tradeshift vision of the future of P2P – and, I have to say the vision is as exciting as it is dramatic which was matched by the magnificent view of the river Thames and the rapidly evolving skyline of London. London Skyline   Christian Lanng’s presentation was actually superb, it really was, but there was one part of it when he made a claim that I suspect - just suspect - may not have been quite 100% based entirely in the broad realm of factuality - if you know what I mean - but more of that later.

This is how the thought process goes for AP automation: "Electronic invoicing could save us lots of time. We could automate accounts payable." "Wait - this could be to be complicated. We'd need a project manager and an expert. We may have to buy in some software or work with a third party. Actually this stuff doesn't come free. It could cost a fortune." "$1 per invoice must be cheaper than the cost of a paper and manual process but at 1 million invoices per year, we'll never justify that. Let's make an incremental step toward automation. We can scan our invoices and handle them digitally." Yeah, right!

Today, a post from Richard Manson from CloudTrade I recently received an email from a disgruntled supplier, unhappy at the request they had received from a customer asking them to submit their invoice via the ‘leading global e-invoice network’. Their frame of mind wasn’t a reaction to the physical act of submitting electronic invoices – though they did say they weren’t impressed by the limited submission options available, and were concerned about the impact it would have on their business. Their dismay was that they were being asked to pay for the privilege of sending their own invoices to their customer - and pay far more than it would cost them to use the standard postal service!

Today, Richard Manson from CloudTrade explains how EDI programmes can be transformed to extend their reach. EDI is nothing new. In fact it has been around since the 1970’s. So why do most organisations that venture down this route still find it so hard to on-board suppliers? It’s not just the number of suppliers that are able and willing to adopt EDI, but also the time it takes to get suppliers on-board. To get an insight into the issues, let’s first step through the typical supplier adoption process.

I have a great deal of respect for Gartner and pay close attention to their insights and futurology. Despite that, I get a great sense of satisfaction on the occasions when I see what’s what before them. It’s not news to me that Nipendo are cool but it’s great to see their coolness recognized by a firm as august as Gartner. Nipendo have been named as a "Cool Vendor" in Gartner’s new report “Cool Vendors in Integration, 2014” by Keith Guttridge, Massimo Pezzini, Paolo Malinverno & Jess Thompson. It means that, in the authors’ opinion, Nipendo are “Innovative, Impactful and Intriguing”.