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There's an old magic trick that I am sure everyone is familiar with. The magician approaches a fully laid dining table with full place settings including wine, wine glasses, condiments and a small vase with a flower in it. He takes hold of the table cloth. As quick as a flash he tugs at the cloth removing it from under the crockery and glassware without any of it moving save a slight rattle. Well, I have a tip for everyone. Don't attempt this trick - especially if your delivering a business briefing over breakfast at the Ritz hotel in London to the a select group of captains of industry. Believe me - I speak from personal experience - it's not big and it's not clever. There was something very memorable about that breakfast briefing in 1998. It was the look of absolute horror on the face of the CEO of one of the biggest retail groups in the UK - not at the silly icebreaker with the table cloth - it was the prediction that consumers would, within 10 years, be doing their grocery shopping on-line.

This week we are delighted to welcome Torsten Budesheim Director of Marketing at Taulia as a guest blogger. --- Recent surveys confirm that e-invoicing has finally reached the early majority of users in the technology adoption life-cycle. Paystream Advisors, in a late 2010 survey found that 40% of their survey participants had plans to adopt e-invoicing. This all looks very promising and should help Accounts Payable (AP) organizations around the globe increase operational efficiencies and at a minimum, realize savings from reduction of the time spent for data entry and exception handling.

We're delighted to share the news that sharedserviceslink.com has announced the full line up for the Summit for Leaders in Finance Shared Services and Outsourcing 2011 on October 10th to 12th in Dallas, Texas. Speakers, facilitators and solution providers will come together to discuss practical and proven approaches that help finance functions drive down costs while delighting their end users and stakeholders.

There are few that would disagree that Ariba sits firmly amongst the best in class procurement vendors. Its heritage goes back to the pioneering days of e-procurement and it has continued to innovate successfully ever since, diversifying its portfolio of solutions across the P2P spectrum. But while its procurement credentials are impeccable - the first P - how credible is Ariba at addressing the second P at the payment end of the spectrum?