News

A unique supply chain finance solution from OB10 improves companies’ working capital and cash flow

OB10, the e-Invoicing network that handles £90bn of payments each year, has launched OB10 Express Payments, a unique supply chain finance service that allows organisations to receive payment on approved invoices within three days. The service supports the agreement announced this week between Prime Minister David Cameron and large UK organisations to consider or continue helping their suppliers’ cash flow through supply chain finance.

In a research report by Purchasing Insight and Paystream Advisors to be published in a few weeks time, we indicate some real evidence that the e-invoicing market has reached or even passed the tipping point and today, the expected land grab associated with the rapid increase in interest in e-invoicing has just accelerated. Basware, already one of the largest and most important operators in this space, have just announced the acquisition of Certipost's network e-invoicing business.

A high profile public procurement exercises in the UK has become a very public embarrassment for the British government as the award of the franchise for one of the country’s busiest rail lines has been withdrawn following complaints from one of the unsuccessful bidders. This is going to lead to calls for public procurement processes to be examined and it will do nothing for the reputation of procurement professionals in the public sector who regularly come under fire from a press who will seek to conclude that the public procurement process needs to be overhauled. But that’s exactly the wrong conclusion to draw. Indeed, I think that the whole debacle shows the strength of the procurement process – not its weakness.

I remember as a little kid being captivated by the imagery in the Tin Tin comic album “Destination Moon”. It’s an outlandish adventure that involves travelling through space in a red and white rocket ship all the way to the moon. And in parallel, the outlandish adventure was being played out for real in the Apollo missions. When Neil Armstrong became the first human being to step on another world, fantasy became reality. Science fiction became science fact and we could dare to dream that anything was possible. The sad news that Neil Armstrong died this weekend serves more than to remind us of that great event in history. It’s also a reminder of that age of adventure when it wasn’t all about money.