Compliance

Ask anyone who’s worked in more than one purchasing organization. When it comes to technology, they’re not normally what you would describe as model implementations. Supplier data all over the place, catalogues out of date, Heinz 57 varieties of purchasing system. Purchase to Pay processes are very rarely joined up and if purchase to pay really is the plumbing of your organization, you’d be drowning. But before you beat yourself up about your role in this chaos, ask yourself the question: Why is it that everything is always a mess?

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.