Author: Pete Loughlin

Standards in B2B are a waste of time. They are a waste of energy, intellectual capacity and money. They have no place in the business world in 21st century. For as long as I can remember, the great and good in the B2B world have espoused the use of standards as a fundamental component of business communication in the technology enabled world - yet they have simultaneously complained abut the number of standards that are out there. Surely its about time that we all realized and accepted that further attempts to evangelize and impose standards will not work. They’ve never worked in the past. If they had, there would not be so many standards today (not to mention the numerous standards bodies). We normally learn from our mistakes - once bitten, twice shy. In the B2B world - once bitten, twice bitten.

Basware, the leading provider of purchase-to-pay solutions, has further expanded its Open Network for e-invoice and purchase message transactions by achieving the significant milestone of 100 partners across the globe. New partners include First Businesspost in Germany; Unified Post in the Netherlands; and Inovis, part...

Purchase to Pay, P2P and Dynamic DiscountingThere's much talk about dynamic discounting and how it can yield significant returns on investment but dynamic discounting is absolutely not the first step in extracting value out of purchase to pay optimization - it is the final step. Let's go back to basics and remember that P2P is not a core function of an organization. Rather, it supports the core functions such as sourcing and procurement, accounts payable and finance. Purchase to pay develops and installs synergy across the physical and financial supply chain and uses technology to support better ways of working to reduce the cost of doing business with suppliers.