Logica, a leading IT and business services company, today announces an extension to its partnership with OB10, the largest global electronic invoicing (e-invoicing) network. The new interoperation agreement brings together the scale, geographic spread and full tax compliance from two large e-invoicing networks with nearly 50,000 corporate users across more than 90 countries between them. It will enable customers of both networks to accelerate cost savings from e-invoicing worth millions of Euros every year.
Both e-invoice networks feed invoice data directly into ERP and accounting systems, delivering significant cost savings and business process efficiencies to customers. The networks are a key component of Logica’s award winning total invoice management (TIM) solution.
With OB10, the total invoice management solution streamlines paper and electronic invoice processing. TIM addresses the key challenges to the successful deployment of electronic invoicing, including accurate line item detail, legal compliance, archiving and leveraging existing ERP functionality to maximise straight through processing. Importantly, the service includes a programme to recruit a client’s supplier-base backed by volume assurances.
Accounts Payable paper invoices can each cost up to euro 50 to process, accounting for both the direct and indirect costs. Logica’s total invoice management solution allows organisations to achieve cost efficiencies (up to 70 per cent per invoice) and streamline their invoice payment processes. Because data is delivered directly into the accounting system, e-invoicing leads to improved efficiency, speedier VAT recovery and greater accuracy in reporting and forecasting. As well as their positive environmental impact, e-invoices offer improved support for corporate governance initiatives.
Already, more than 10,000 organisations send over 30 million electronic invoices a year over Logica’s network and benefit from significant improvements in both purchase-to-pay and order-to-cash processes.
Garry Young, director invoice management practice at Logica, explains the benefits of the interoperation agreement for customers: ‘Inbound paper invoices are expensive to process with an average direct cost alone, of between euro 5 and euro 15 per invoice. For an enterprise processing 250,000 paper invoices a year that represents potentially euro 3,750,000 every year in direct costs. ‘
‘One key factor in achieving cost savings from e-invoicing is to ensure that your supplier base agree to send invoices electronically. Logica’s TIM service provides customers with 100 per cent electronic data from day one, via a combination of scanning and optical character recognition (OCR) of paper invoices and e-invoicing provided both by OB10 and Logica’s own network. In addition, OB10 manage the company’s supplier enrolment to the e-invoicing service, a key element in the success of the TIM business benefits case for clients. Through this interoperation agreement, we will accelerate the migration away from paper to e-invoices and deliver even greater cost savings to our respective clients.’
‘All existing customers will benefit as we work to move them away from paper scanning and OCR to ‘true’ e-invoices. OB10 customers will benefit from Logica’s large number of Nordic based corporate users, whilst Logica customers will benefit from OB10’s broad spread in Europe, North America and the Asia-pacific region.’
Jamie Gunn, CEO at OB10, comments: ‘We are delighted to extend our partnership with Logica. This interoperation agreement strengthens OB10’s commitment to growth by helping us to open up markets in the Nordic countries and adds value to Logica’s customers through our global e-invoicing capability. We are looking forward to continuing a prosperous relationship that adds real value to both Logica’s and OB10’s customers.
