Monday 14th January, 2013

As reported in The Guardian today, full adoption of e-invoicing by the government could result in up to £28bn of benefits, in return for a relatively small level of investment. In this age of austerity, e-invoicing is simply too good an opportunity to miss. The question is, how long will it take for the Government to recognise this and drive the changes forward? Despite many recent improvements, the civil service remains bureaucratic and relatively slow to accept change.

In fact, Britain already lags behind most of Europe and many of our global competitors. In Denmark, paper invoicing has been banned in the public sector since 2005. E-invoicing in the public sector has been in operation in Sweden since 2008 and the Finnish government has implemented an "e-invoices only" policy since January 2010. Britain must step up its game.