e-invoicing

Today, another post from Richard Manson from CloudTrade The limited use of SMEs by local government has for many years been flagged as a problem. There are 4.8m SMEs in the UK, making up around 50% of the private sector with an annual turnover of £3 trillion. Yet SMEs are often discouraged from public sector deals due to the bureaucracy that comes with working with them and the associated costs which can price SMEs out of this market space. In a bid to increase the use of SMEs, UK government and the European parliament have introduced initiatives to make it easier for SMEs to do business with the public sector. Yet the success of these has been limited. Initiatives have mainly focused on the use of technology and frameworks to reduce the barriers SMEs face in doing business in the public sector. Although a step in the right direction, the myriad of frameworks and poor adoption rates within government has hindered success.

A few weeks ago, Tungsten, the e-invoicing people, announced a 'simplification' of their tariff structure for suppliers using their network. The change follows a successful pilot in the UK during which one major buyer reported that supplier adoption of Tungsten e-Invoicing increased from 55% to 64% in three months as a result of this new pricing model. That's quite an impressive increase - which begs the question - why stop there?

New technologies always promise to disrupt – it’s nearly always hype or enthusiastic futurology manifesting itself as over excitement that hasn’t really been thought through. But it's not always hype and it's great to see optimistic expectations actually being delivered in the real world.

I tell you what you want what you really really want - Doritos!

It was 1995. Monica Lewinski was in the White House, Windows 95 was launched, the Spice Girls were becoming the biggest girl group ever and last but not least, the internet fridge was launched. Don't believe the nouveau geeks who swear that the internet of things is something new. The Internet fridge has been breaking it's promise to disrupt the world of chilled groceries for nearly two decades. It seemed like a good idea but no one really thought it through. Many of us consider internet marketing to be intrusive. We shouldn't complain. We know what the deal is it when we sign up for "free" services in the full knowledge we're inviting the marketers into our inbox and onto our desktop. But if you thought internet marketing was intrusive, try inviting the marketers directly into your fridge to manage your snack inventory. You might believe you're buying into the internet of everything but, believe me, let an internet fridge into your kitchen and within weeks it will be full of nothing but Tortilla chips and salsa dip.

Today, another post from Richard Manson from CloudTrade Let’s start at the beginning. What do we know about 26? Wikipedia - the font of all knowledge - tells me that 26 is ‘the natural number following 25 and preceding 27’. OK, I can go with this. That’s pretty accurate I guess. But I know it is more than that. So what else? Apparently a shape with 26 faces is a rhombicuboctahedron. But, hey, my 2 year old could have told me that... (Note to self, remember that for the next pub quiz). It is the atomic number for Iron (also useful for the pub quiz). But moving away from impressive ways to win £50 on a Thursday night... What else do we know? The 26th letter and the last letter of the English alphabet is Z. It is the length of a marathon (26 miles and 385 yards to be exact). The human foot and ankle has 26 bones. 26 is the total number of cases on the US version of Deal or No Deal. ....OK, I feel we are now slipping back to the realms of the pub quiz. So we can see there are many interesting instances of the number 26. Yet the most important (in our eyes at least!) seems to be missing. And without wishing to question the accuracy of Wikipedia, I feel it my duty to reveal the most important, yet missing, reference.