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Billentis: 2013 e-Invoicing & e-Billing Forecast by Bruno Koch

 

Recently Billentis published their “E-Billing/E-Invoicing: International Overview & Forecast” for 2013, which was carried out by market analyst and e-Billing expert, Bruno Koch.

Koch’s forecast for e-Invoicing and e-Billing in 2013 is upbeat; it is seen as one of the major areas of growth for the European economy. He’s estimated that the service provider community will generate an e-Billing/e-Invoicing turnover of about €1.7 Billion.

e-Billing/e-Invoicing Forecast for 2013 by Bruno Koch

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Posted on March 6, 2013 in e-Commerce, e-Invoicing, eBilling, Electronic Billing, eProcurement, EU, European Commission, European Union by
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Celtrino Strengthens its Position in the e-Commerce World in 2012

 

2012 saw Celtrino grow and adapt in the e-Commerce world

In 2012 Celtrino increased its market share while positioning itself for future growth that will consolidate its current position as the leading B2B e-Commerce provider in Ireland and allow the company to explore new markets abroad.

For this blog we talked to Managing Director Ken Halpin about Celtrino’s year in 2012 and looked briefly at some prospects for 2013,

“In a very challenging economic climate for our customers, Celtrino successfully strengthened its position in each of the verticals within which it operates. In addition, we increased our levels of investment in people, processes, infrastructure and services across the company to better serve our customers and the needs of the marketplace.”

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Posted on January 16, 2013 in Celtrino Express, Celtrino Platform, e-Commerce, eProcurement, PEPPOL by
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Celtrino Exhibiting at e-Procurement Conference Featuring Minister Brian Hayes TD

 

Tomorrow Minister Brian Hayes will make a keynote address on Ireland’s future approach to e-Procurement and e-Invoicing in Ireland. This follows the recent successful completion of a multi-stakeholder pilot e-Invoicing (PEPPOL) project. The Irish public sector is fast playing catch-up with much of the rest of Europe who have already made binding policy decisions in these areas in advance of EU wide changes that are coming down the track. 

Ken Halpin, Celtrino MD at PEPPOL Conference in Rome 2012

Ken Halpin at PEPPOL Conference in Rome.

The European Commission estimates that the transition to e-Procurement and e-Invoicing within the EU by the start of 2015 will result in public sector savings of €100 billion (that’s a saving of about €1 billion annually for Ireland).  In addition, to realising savings in the cost of goods and services purchased, the Irish Government will reduce payroll costs through productivity gains.

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Posted on October 17, 2012 in e-Invoicing, eProcurement, EU, European Commission, Public Sector by
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Ghana Unveils eProcurement Plans

 

The West African state of Ghana has announced plans to implement an electronic procurement system by the end of 2012. The new system is being funded under a three year pilot scheme by the World Bank.

Ghana Unveils e-Procurement Plans

Source: Financialtechnologyafrica.com

The move to an electronic procurement alternative is, as with most similar projects, designed to reduce the costs incurred by the Ghanaian government when securing goods and services. The highest spending government departments will be the first migrated onto the new eProcurement platform including the Ghana Cocoa Board, the Volta River Authority, Ghana Grid Company, Ministry of Communications and the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning.

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Posted on August 22, 2012 in eProcurement, Public Sector by
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EU eProcurement Framework Agreed

 

In early February, in a further boost to electronic trading across the European Union, the Competitiveness Council created a set of goals designed to promote online trade and electronic invoicing. Meeting in Denmark, various ministers laid out a timeline promoting several web-based trading systems with a view to doubling online sales by 2015.

The push for greater use of business technology is also reflected by attempts to grow online public markets until 2016, and e-Invoicing until at least 2020. The Danish EU presidency presented figures to ministers suggesting that growth of the digital single market would undoubtedly grow European GDP, perhaps by as much as four per cent over the next eight years.

EU eProcurement Framework AgreedThe European Commission recognise that at present digital public procurement markets remain a relatively niche sector of the wider marketplace, but the well documented benefits of switching from manual to digital processing should benefit member states in the long run. Factoring in reductions in manual administration should also help reduce costs and foster a greater degree of competition between suppliers at the point of tender.

During the same meeting, ministers backed the findings of the European Commission publication ‘e-Invoicing: Reaping the benefits of electronic invoicing for Europe’, which suggests increased adoption of the technology for cross-border e-Invoicing for member states. The report suggests that introduction of e-Invoicing between Eurozone members will significantly improve international supply chains across Europe creating working capital gains in excess of £300 million.

The move towards greater use of eProcurement systems and increased online trading comes in the same week that the European Union legislated for the new Single European Payments Area (SEPA), designed to facilitate easier banking across the region. Although the EU still trails behind several South American countries in their use of e-Procurement and invoicing, these recent changes will finally start to see that change.

 

Sources
http://www.sharedserviceslink.com/file/94290/eu-ministers-set-out-online-billing-and-procurement-plans.html


Posted on March 26, 2012 in Digital Single Market, e-Invoicing, eProcurement, EU, European Union, SEPA by
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Supply Chain Efficiency Benefits Ignored According to Survey

 

Supply Chain Efficiency Benefits IgnoredThe 2011 edition of the annual Engineering & Manufacturing Supply Chain Survey has been published this week based on the responses of 120 UK-based senior supply chain managers and makes for interesting reading.

Over one-fifth (22%) of respondents admitted that their procurement and sourcing procedures and mechanisms required improvement. By improving the inbound purchasing system, this group of supply chain managers believed that their businesses could recognise a number of efficiencies and cost savings not available in their current methodologies.

Perhaps the most surprising finding of the Supply Chain Survey was that only 54% of the managers surveyed were convinced that improving their supply chain would also help improve their business’ balance sheets. For many years supply chain management experts have been advising companies on creating efficiencies for improved return on investment but the message appears to have been ignored by many in-house managers despite many success stories across most industry sectors.

Ian King, business director of engineering and manufacturing at DHL who commissioned the report believes that although most respondents believed their supply chains could be improved, supply chain improvements extend beyond cost reductions. Commenting on the results of the survey King said, “it seems that one area they [those questioned] might be overlooking is the impact that improving supply chain efficiency can have on their supply chain.”

At a time when the costs of raw materials are rising steadily and resources are becoming more scarce, businesses need to focus on the costs that they can control. Although the prices a supplier charges cannot be fully controlled, the way in which products are sourced, inventoried, assembled, catalogued or warehoused can, and any costs reduced through introducing efficiencies equate to a direct positive effect on the balance sheet.

2012 is currently being promoted as the year of the cloud, where hosted supply chain management systems have reached the level of maturity and stability required to become a ‘game changer’. For the 54% of supply chain managers who believe efficiencies improve their business’ profitability, now might be the time to investigate such platforms and recognise those savings.


Posted on March 5, 2012 in Cloud Computing, eProcurement, Supply Chain Management, Survey by
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What is PEPPOL?

 

Since the announcement of the e-Invoicing & PEPPOL project last week by Minister Brian Hayes, the Minister of State with special responsibility for the Office of Public Works there has been much online and offline discussion about the nature and origin of the project itself. In my last post on the subject I stated that e-Invoicing isn’t new to Ireland. Indeed, Celtrino has been helping Irish companies do it for more than 20 years. But PEPPOL is new to Ireland and the purpose of this post is to provide a brief overview of PEPPOL.

So, what is PEPPOL?

PEPPOL stands for the Pan-European Public Procurement Online project.

At a high level, PEPPOL is an EU initiated and funded e-Procurement project to enable seamless cross-border e-Procurement, connecting communities through standards-based solutions.

In particular, PEPPOL will enable any company in any EU member state to respond to any tender across the EU. Therefore, any Irish or EU company will be able to tender for government projects in any EU member state.

Why PEPPOL?

Government inefficiency, particularly government procurement inefficiency is the focus of PEPPOL. Less than 5% of total procurement budgets are awarded electronically and only 1.6% of contracts are supplied by an entity in another Member State. It is estimated that if e-Procurement is adopted by all European contracting authorities, annual savings could exceed €50B.

How will PEPPOL work?

PEPPOL will remove the technical and procedural barriers to public procurement by enabling European businesses to deal electronically with any public buyers in their procurement processes.
PEPPOL is a document exchange service enabling e-Delivery of business documents between government agencies and private companies.

Is PEPPOL Live?

The PEPPOL project was set-up in 1998 and  is currently in test phase in 12 EU member states.
Ireland is an active participant along with Austria,  Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Greece, Portugal, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

Celtrino is a key member of the Irish PEPPOL project and our public sector project partner is the Health Service Executive (HSE).

What is PEPPOL / Pan-European Public Procurement Online

View more presentations from Celtrino

 


Posted on February 14, 2012 in e-Invoicing, eProcurement, EU, European Union, PEPPOL, Private Sector, Procure-to-Pay, Public Sector by
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Are you Over Complicating e-Invoicing?

 

The rush for the paperless office and associated riches available through efficiencies and cost-savings is a compelling argument for many businesses. They then rush through the initial planning only to discover that the complexity of such a deployment is far greater than they had initially anticipated.  Discontent is quickly followed by despair and can even result in the new system being ditched altogether.Over-complicated e-Invoicing?

What goes wrong? Many businesses are simply not prepared for the culture shock associated with the changes required to their processes and cannot adjust to the more rigid structures required. Although “touchless” systems promise the greatest returns on investment, the fact that they also affect every part of an organisation means the greatest disruption, even if it is only short-lived.

And here lies the nub of the problem. The deployment of an e-Procurement system is all or nothing; it must be implemented across the entire company simultaneously, or not at all. There are no piecemeal implementation options.

Contrast this with e-Invoicing which is the process of replacing paper-based invoice documentation with its electronic equivalent. In this scenario, all of the benefits of a touchless system are still available (reduced staff burden, reduced time to payment, ongoing reduced costs), but the impact is borne by the accounts department alone.

The implementation of an e-Invoicing system for many companies provides the perfect opportunity to test out a single paperless department and solve the common deployment problems on a smaller scale. These lessons can then be carried forward, once the business benefits have been properly recognized, and a wider deployment authorised.

The implementation of any electronic platform will always require changes to business processes, but much of the complication can be reduced by taking on a smaller challenge first. Although e-Procurement may be your company’s eventual target, an e-Invoicing roll out may provide the practice you need to get the process right.


Posted on December 19, 2011 in Business Process Automation, e-Invoicing, eProcurement by
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UniPhar Group nominated for “Best Use of Technology in Procurement” at The 2011 National Procurement Awards!

 

The National Procurement Awards 2011There is always a strong sense of pride when one of your customers is nominated by their peers for a best-in-class award at an annual gathering of industry experts. The sense of pride is in part a vindication that your customer chose well in selecting you to deliver such a strategically important solution, also as we delivered what the customer wanted on time and budget and finally, a well-deserved feeling of confidence in a job well done.

Tonight, at the National Procurement Awards, Uniphar is nominated in the category for ‘Best Use of Technology in Procurement.’ Uniphar has been nominated for its Link service and it is testament to its success as it has been live just over one year. The web-based customer portal enables Uniphar Group to manage all interactions with member pharmacies from a single central point. The pharmacies can place orders online at any time, view up-to-date orders, process invoices and other key information.

Uniphar LinkTom McKenna who is the Commercial Director at Uniphar Wholesale puts everything in context when he says, “Identifying that a large group of independent pharmacies buying together could get the same type of purchasing discounts as a chain – that is not innovation, it is just plain economics. Where the innovation lies is in creating a procurement system that will save pharmacy managers time and effort, as well as money.”

As the clock ticks down to the ceremony tonight, we wish Tom and his team every success and do hope that they pick up the top award. It would be the icing on the cake to a job well done!


Posted on November 17, 2011 in Announcements, Cloud Computing, eProcurement, Integrated Supply Chain Management Platform, Pharmacy Sector, SaaS by
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EU Digital Agenda Roadshow Reaches Dublin and London

 

Digital Agenda for Europe logoFollowing the success of similar events last year, the EU Digital Agenda for Europe agency are organising a follow-up regional “tour” inviting localised stakeholders to discuss the creation of a true European Digital Single Market. Ministers from both the Irish and British governments as well as EU representatives will participate in a number of sessions to explore the potential solutions to the challenges that this presents.

Despite there being an unfortunate bias towards “digital content creators” on the agenda, certain challenges face any business looking to do business across international borders, from cultural differences to the need for integrated IT supply chain management and invoicing systems. Given this, several question and answer sessions are scheduled, along with opportunities to network with key EU Commissioners and Directors of Policy allowing conference delegates to learn from the experiences of their counterparts in other European countries.

During the morning open discussion and lunchtime sessions, the different approaches to e-Procurement and e-Invoicing used across Europe will also be debated as UK businesses seek to understand the implications of trading electronically with other government bodies and businesses on the continent. Standardisation of systems and platforms will also become essential as the single market concept develops.

The use of hosted services that transcend physical borders and language differences for electronic invoice presentment and payment will also be of keen interest to businesses seeking to expand their European operations. Platforms and services which are locale agnostic and can accept input from any finance system will be essential to the development of a true cross-border, pan-European marketplace.

The Digital Agenda for Europe agency intend to run further local sessions in Cardiff, Manchester, Edinburgh, Bristol and Birmingham, although there has not yet been any official date announced.

Questions and comment from UK and Irish stakeholders are also being sought via Twitter for presentation during each of the events. More details are available at http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/events/cf/daelocal/item-display.cfm?id=6999


Posted on November 9, 2011 in Digital Agenda for Europe, Digital Single Market, e-Invoicing, EIPP, eProcurement, EU, European Commission, European Union by
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