Friday 16th October, 2015

With around 300 attendees from 30 countries, the 2^nd Exchange Summit in Barcelona this month proved to be a hot bed of all the latest in einvoicing. One of the main attractions of the show is the chance to meet some key influencers in the space – from vendors, policy makers and consultants, to experienced end-users.

The two day event kicked off with a keynote from Bruno Koch from Billentis (and former EXPP host) whose research puts einvoicing growth this year at 15% - which in a zero growth, low interest rate environment, offers significant investment potential. And certainly from my conversations at lunch, those working on behalf of investors were doing the rounds – asking questions, looking to make connections.

Of course einvoicing is hardly new – but what has changed is the growth of the network – and the power that brings with it. And this is where the headline for the conference comes in “from einvoicing to eSupply chain management”, it’s in the value to business of financing the supply chain where the industry sees some of the growth potential. The traditional routes to cash, such as factoring have historically only been available to organisations that can afford it. The past few years have seen the emergence of various dynamic discounting solutions which concentrated on the long tail, but these days, solution providers such as Ariba, Taulia and Basware have built a whole supply chain finance suite of products to address an organisation’s needs that can benefit both buyer and supplier in a variety of formats.

And lot of the potential comes from being connected, and a fair amount of the event’s focus fell on interoperability – unsurprising considering the main sponsor was EESPA. But it stands to reason that if a network is open, it’s probably going to grow faster and deeper than one which is closed – at least that’s what some providers have put their money on. In fact Esa Tihila, co-chair of EESPA and Basware CEO says that interoperability is “vastly important” for einvoicing growth, and that those with other business models will “have to change” in the future.

Which leads us on to standardisation, and the arguments for and against specific standardisation in a world where many organisations conduct business globally, as well as being one where the majority of invoices are still sent inter-country were interesting, and easily fodder for a long debate on its own. And as Dr Kauffmeyer said it all “goes back to which standards should we develop?” In fact, in his view standardisation “doesn’t make sense in a globalised world.” Listening to the conversations, there was slightest sense of watching an old and well-trodden argument. There was also a sense that those involved need to take care that the market doesn’t move on while they’re not watching.

But of course it makes sense to build a framework which can enable einvoicing to grow – it’s just a question of finding the right one(s). And this is where mandating comes in as well. Used successfully in Latin America, it’s something which is starting to come into effect across Europe – already in place in Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Austria amongst others, and from 2018, in the US too. The drivers for doing so vary from country to country, but as well as being a process which speeds up transactions and reduces costs, the levels of visibility and accountability mean that einvoicing has the capacity to inhibit corruption and make it more difficult to avoid tax responsibilities. Over the next couple of years, it’ll be interesting to see how this affects einvoicing growth, and the impact it has into the penetration of the private sector.

One of the effects of a deeply connected network, is the creation of an enormous amount of data. And the race is now on to find out how to tap into it. Ronald van Loom from Dutch-based data analyst firm, Adversitement said in his keynote, that Gartner has predicted that those organisations that adopt big data will outperform competitors by 20%, and yet only 15% of companies are companies are currently in a position to do that. Ronald said that increasingly, data is fast becoming the “oil of the economy” get it wrong and it just won’t run. To stay relevant, the question companies should ask themselves is – are you going to disrupt, or be disrupted?

It’s easy to get bogged down in the technicalities, but I think Tim Cole, EVP Causeway Technologies, hit the nail on the head during the closing panel discussion when he pointed out that the focus needs to be kept on the end user. Attention needs to keep coming back to - what are we in the business to do, and are we achieving that? And what end users need most of all is ease of use, functionality and clarity. Any confusion over ROI, usage or even what an einvoice is and can do for business, creates delays in adoption and understanding.

And not wanting to get too bogged down ourselves - we weren’t in Barcelona for nothing – as well as being a fantastic hub for each of the attendees' home countries, Monday night saw the group heading down (or up as it later turned out) to the restaurant and bar at the iconic W hotel by the beach. With fantastic views across the bay, the discussions lasted long into the evening, and with the Finns, Spanish and Brits still talking into the small hours, it’s good to know that amid a sea of change, some things will always stay the same.