Tag Archive - EU

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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EU Sets SEPA Deadline for February 2014

 

SEPA. The 32 member states of the Single Euro Payments Area and two non-members

The 32 member states of the Single Euro Payments Area and two non-members. Source: Wikipedia

In a busy week for The European Union’s law makers, an agreement has finally been put in place to increase the ease with which businesses and consumers can make and receive bank payments across member states. The Single European Payments Area (SEPA) legislation has been agreed and will come into force on February 1st 2014, forcing banks to be more transparent about international payments and eliminate hidden charges.

The changes brought about by SEPA are intended to save around €123 billion in bank charges over six years through cuts in transaction fees billed to businesses within the EU. The major benefit of SEPA however will be the reduction in the number of bank accounts required for a business to trade effectively with the Eurozone to just one.

SEPA will allow companies or individuals to maintain a single bank account in any European country of their choice and make Euro transactions to any other account, anywhere in Europe. Individuals working ‘abroad’ will also benefit as they will no longer be required to open a new bank account in the host country; payments can still be made to their bank at home minimising the problems associated with setting up a new account in a foreign country.

MEPs are also expecting the efficiencies created by SEPA to encourage further use of electronic invoicing across member states. The bulk of the estimated €123 billion in savings is predicted to come from the ease of making and receiving electronic payments coupled with e-invoicing. This will create a more efficient, inter-operable framework.

Technically SEPA has been in force since January 2008, but a low take up has forced legislators’ hands. This latest decision by MEPs ensures that the February 2014 deadline is legally binding.

 

Sources:

http://www.sharedserviceslink.com/file/94302/february-2014-sepa-deadline-set.html


Posted on March 20, 2012 in e-Invoicing, European Union, SEPA, The Single European Payments Area 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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EDI – Did You Know?

 

EDI (Electronic Data Interchange)DI, or Electronic Data Interchange to give it its full title, has been around as a “standard” since the 1970s, facilitating data transfer between businesses ever since. The idea of providing a strict data structure which would facilitate data transfer between computer systems without involving human intervention, thus reducing the space for human error, was immediately attractive.

Skip forward 30 years and the attraction of automation and reduced intervention remains very attractive. In fact, so attractive that there are currently more than 50 different EDI standards in active use across the European Union.

Why?

The advent of the flexible data interchange markup language XML in the 1990s, immediately allowed business sectors who believed that their market vertical was significantly different to others to create their own EDI standards. The ease of use meant that just about anyone could define and implement their own standard to meet their needs, whether or not something suitable already existed.

Even the European Union got in on the act, creating an EDI standard specifically for short distance sea trips, such as ferry crossings between England and France, as a distinctly separate standard to that in place for long haul shipping.

Problem?

This proliferation of standards is not such a problem for businesses operating solely within a particular sector, but any who supply to multiple industries or sectors will need to implement several different systems to cope with the EDI demands of each customer. Not only is such a system hugely complex to implement and manage, it is seldom cost effective either.

Clearly, pulling out of the market altogether is not an option, but a system which interacts transparently with all required formats without intervention is preferable. A system which requires no on-going maintenance and is hosted externally is even more desirable because of the potential cost savings available.

The future?

The UN and EU have both tasked committees with finding a way to condense their own plethora of competing standards; despite their best efforts they were only able to rationalise 12 different e-invoicing standards into two. Neither committee was able to find a way of bending the standards to meet every need.

The solution clearly lies in finding a system which allows industries, sectors and sub-sectors to continue with their current EDI formats, but which translates electronic invoicing and payment data automatically and transparently into the correct format for both supplier and purchaser. Such a system immediately reduces the burden on businesses looking to trade across industries, reducing their own EDI implementations to just one, externally hosted solution.

 

To find out how Celtrino’s Smart Admin platform could help reduce your EDI implementation complexities, please contact us at +353 1 873 99 02.

 


Posted on November 21, 2011 in e-Invoicing, EDI, EU, European Union 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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EXPP 2011 Observations

 

Taking place in Barcelona this year, the EXPP Summit drew speakers from across the world to discuss the impact electronic invoice presentation and payment (EIPP) was having on their respective countries. Along with the usual discussions about that status of the market and current trends within EIPP, several in-depth case studies of successful deployments were presented to conference delegates.EXPP Summit logo

Examples given of e-invoicing deployments within South and Central America focused on the need to reduce tax fraud, which has been rampant under previous transactional regimes. Changes in legislation in some countries has seen market uptake reach 90%, whilst all of the nations implementing EIPP have recorded a rapidly growing uptake of the service. Providers of outsourced EIPP services in Latin America have recorded exponential growth and many established European businesses are now trying to penetrate the market.

When the focus was shifted to European EIPP uptake, success was driven by the need to increase business competitiveness, rather than reduce tax fraud. The ability to adapt business transaction methods quickly and to increase efficiency were identified as the driving forces behind e–invoicing deployments. Unlike Latin America, where  the government forces  businesses to interact electronically, European decision makers must be convinced of the cost benefits of EIPP before they will commit to using the technology available.

Unlike Latin America, where many countries have chosen to legislate to enforce e-invoicing, the European Union continues to accord paper and electronic invoices equal status, slowing the uptake of EIPP. However, it was pointed out that many EIPP service providers had misunderstood the EU’s directive which suggests that electronic invoices should be audited in exactly the same way as paper invoices.

And despite the high uptake of e-invoicing in Latin America, businesses are only engaging this way for tax purposes. EIPP has not led to greater supply chain integration as could be expected. Clearly EIPP providers still have some work to do to show companies in the region the benefits of integrating systems for greater efficiency and cost  savings.


Posted on November 4, 2011 in e-Invoicing, EIPP, Electronic Invoice Presentment & Payment, European Union, Supply Chain Integration by
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