Blogpost: Keep it simple stupid – useful rule for all of us.

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© Networked Economy – Bo Harald / Wed, 17 Sep 2008 09:12:00 GMT

Nobody seems to be of the opinion that paper invoices have any future worth mentioning. In yesterday’s SIBOS session here in Vienna there was an even surprisingly overwhelming yes-vote for banks to include e-invoicing into their services. So the mindset is there. And when organisations like SWIFT mobilize resources a high quality standardization work will start to produce also longer term benefits.

But….

There is still a lot of players who keep stressing how difficult and exceedingly complex it all is. Is it? Yes – it can be if you look at it only from the procurement value chain angle and still today variancies in VAT-rules. No – if you look at it from the payment initiation angle and nationally. And this is what the EU work is focusing on – to give the SMEs in EU a 0-investment and 0-itskill tool for sending invoices with sufficient data fields to satisfy also large organisation receiving them. One tool that works in all directions – just like payments. And by accepting the authenticity and auditability that the payment industry is delivering the VAT-issues are solved in practise.

It is of course a habit of vendors to stress the complexity – it can be good for sales figures. But in this case I believe that is outrightly counterproductive for all as it confuses the market and scares away both enterprises and new services providers – thus the network effect.

E-invoicing does not have to be complex – we know it from our experience. So now it is up to the banking communities to sit down and agree on the very simple approach – form the network, include also non-banks, take a suitable version of ready financial invoice standards in use right away and include it just-like-payments in ordinary e-banking.

Keep it simple stupid – useful rule for all of us.