Electronic Invoicing
11 Jun Extending the reach of your EDI program
Today, Richard Manson from CloudTrade explains how EDI programmes can be transformed to extend their reach. EDI is nothing new. In fact it has been around since the 1970’s. So why do most organisations that venture down this route still find it so hard to on-board suppliers? It’s not just the number of suppliers that are able and willing to adopt EDI, but also the time it takes to get suppliers on-board. To get an insight into the issues, let’s first step through the typical supplier adoption process.02 Jun Nipendo Named a “Cool Vendor” by Gartner
I have a great deal of respect for Gartner and pay close attention to their insights and futurology. Despite that, I get a great sense of satisfaction on the occasions when I see what’s what before them. It’s not news to me that Nipendo are cool but it’s great to see their coolness recognized by a firm as august as Gartner. Nipendo have been named as a "Cool Vendor" in Gartner’s new report “Cool Vendors in Integration, 2014” by Keith Guttridge, Massimo Pezzini, Paolo Malinverno & Jess Thompson. It means that, in the authors’ opinion, Nipendo are “Innovative, Impactful and Intriguing”.07 May Thoughts occasioned by the UK Parliamentary e-invoicing report
I had the pleasure of attending the formal launch of “Electronic Invoicing, the next steps towards digital government” on 30 April. The report is a welcome indication of the seriousness with which the issue is taken in government. It is also a sensible document which does not fall into the trap of underestimating the complexities of the subject. I particularly liked that, although it favours some form of overt or covert mandating of eInvoicing, it does not mandate any particular technical means of achieving this. Inevitably, when reading the document, questions arise and I explore a couple of them here. These are not intended to be criticisms of the work of the inquiry team, more ‘thoughts occasioned by’ the document and also as indications of some of the difficult issues facing them.01 May UK Government confirms its commitment to e-invoicing
Posted at 10:28h
in AP Automation, e-invoicing, Electronic Invoicing, Financial Supply Chain Management, Supply Chain Finance
It was announced yesterday that the UK Government will be fully supporting the introduction of electronic invoicing in public sector. Speaking at the launch of a Parliamentary Report: 'Electronic Invoicing - the next steps towards digital government', Francis Maude, the Minister for the Cabinet Office, expressed with enthusiasm his commitment to see the use of e-invoicing as part of the UK’s ‘Digital by Default’ agenda.
The venue for the launch of the keenly anticipated report was the Strangers Dining Room in the Palace of Westminster, London. I was amongst a group of about 50 people, experts in electronic invoicing from both public and private sector, who listened with some excitement to the strongest endorsement yet by a UK Government Minister of a policy to see payables processes in public sector automated in order to liberate, an estimated £2 billion per year. And despite the wealth of expertise in the room, we all would have struggled to articulate the opportunities with greater clarity than Francis Maude.
23 Apr CloudTrade – one of the best kept secrets in e-invoicing
Every service or solution provider has their USP – their unique selling point that makes them stand out from the crowd. But in reality, when you take a group of similar vendors, they're actually not that different. Electronic invoicing is just like that. To the seasoned professionals there’s a world of a difference between the numerous vendors but to the end user – the ones whose views really count – they’re all the same. So it’s actually quite exciting to find an e-invoicing solution provider that really is a little bit different. Consider this: They’re not disruptive. That's right. A start up that doesn't claim to be disruptive. In fact they have made a virtue of being positively non-disruptive. They are about as non-disruptive as it’s possible to get. That’s quite a challenge – getting suppliers who operate in a paper based world to deal with their customers electronically without demanding they change anything they do. Suppliers like that and suppliers also like that fact that CloudTrade don’t charge them. This is part of the reason that CloudTrade have doubled in size for two consecutive years but to understand the whole story behind CloudTrade’s success, you need to understand their secret sauce – the unique way they approach the market.09 Apr Supply chain finance facility that leverages real time invoice validation
Posted at 12:48h
in AP Automation, e-invoicing, Electronic Invoicing, Financial Supply Chain Management, Purchase to Pay, Supply Chain Finance
I've become a fan of Nipendo. Nipendo offers, in many respects, what I see as the next evolutionary stage in Purchase to Pay. Rather than simply offering clever means to automate the traditional steps in the purchasing process through things like e-procurement and e-invoicing, they offer what I think of as 'Packaged P2P'. When I visited some of their customers recently I spent time with Eyal Rosenberg, their CEO and we spent quite a bit of that time discussing how the Nipendo platform could be leveraged to offer supply chain finance. And now they've done it and the press release that accompanies their new partnership with Integrate Financial explains the synergy.