E-invoicing heaven

All those are not going to bring us to the e-invoicing heavens. That place where the leafs of the trees consists of billions and billions Dollars, Yen, Euro and Yuan notes. Where the birds thank you for saving the environment and where people, animals and plants can communicate with each other thanks to a UML: Universal Mammal Language.

So what is it?

So what is it that delivers us e-invoicing heaven? It is the unforeseen and the obvious: stamps. Stamps, just plain old stamps. To be more specific: the pricing of stamps. We found out that there is a more than coincidental correlation between the price of a stamp and the adoption level of electronic invoices:

Step 1: Take a look at these stamp prices (courtesy of DHL)

Step 2: Compare this table with those in our post “Is your Country a Digitization Hero or Laggard?”

Conclusion

Start increasing the stamp pricing for domestic and –especially- cross border letters and the e-invoicing uptake will ramp off.

This article is from E-invoicing Platform. Read the original post at: The ultimate instrument to promote e-billing adoption.

For legal professionals only: Model Interoperability Agreement

The full name is “Model Interoperability Agreement for Transmission and Processing of Electronic Invoices and other Business Documents”. It is a beefy 32 pages legal document, intended for use on a bilateral basis between service providers processing and transmitting structured data in a “FOUR CORNER MODEL”.

You can give it a go at: ftp://ftp.cen.eu/CEN/Sectors/List/ICT/CWAs/eInv3CWA1.pdf

For service providers only: conformance criteria for interoperability

The full name of this draft CWA is “Conformance Criteria for Interoperability between Electronic Invoicing Services” This CWA is intended for the use of providers of e-invoicing services to third party customers. It contains 7 technology neutral criteria that will find their way into the Code of Practice CWA that should be presented later this year.

This Draft CWA is available at: ftp://ftp.cen.eu/CEN/Sectors/List/ICT/CWAs/eInv3CWA2.pdf

The real deal: Addressing and Routing

One of the main items for full scale e-invoicing adoption is addressing: to know who and where to deliver an invoice to. Adrian Mueller is the main author of this CWA. He is also the main author of the must read “Cyber-Identity: Unique Identification Systems For Organizations And Parts thereof” (ftp://ftp.cen.eu/CEN/Sectors/TCandWorkshops/Workshops/CWA16036CyberID.pdf)

Take a look at this CWA at: ftp://ftp.cen.eu/CEN/Sectors/List/ICT/CWAs/eInv3CWA3.pdf

This article is from E-invoicing Platform. Read the original post at: Public review of 3 Draft CEN E-invoicing Workshop Agreements (CWAs).

The Data Dictionary contains Business Concepts, Message Concepts and Data Types. All these items are reusable and are called Dictionary Items. The Data Dictionary as a whole is under release control.

The Business Process Catalogue is organized in Business Areas. The communication requirements and the interaction requirements in the various Business Areas are supported by Business Transactions. All items that are stored in the Business Process Catalogue are called Catalogue Items.

This diagram shows the high level structure of the ISO 20022 Repository.

The Clean-up-act of the ISO 20022 Business Model.
Have you ever wondered why? There will be no impact at message level. Indeed, this exercise only focuses on refining and improving the business model, namely the definitions of business concepts and how they relate to one another. It is purely a maintenance effort. You have all heard of FileAct; well, this one’s called the CleanupAct.

Why is there already a need to clean things up?
The business model provides the bird’s eye view. It is about capturing real business information, for instance, business concepts, instruments, definitions, characteristics, etc. As with most other things, everything starts with human input, including its inherent imperfections. This means that we are also fixing typos and errors, complete missing traces, refining definitions and removing “tbd-s”. The more the business model is perfected, and the more it gets adopted, the nearer we will come to the elusive, yet much desirable interoperability.

So, high time to take a fresh look at the entire model!

Doing this review under the ISO umbrella means that the business model benefits not only SWIFT standards, but also non-SWIFT standards developed in other areas of the financial community. This is exactly what interoperability aims to achieve!

For more details, please refer to www.iso20022.org and www.swift.com

This article is from E-invoicing Platform. Read the original post at: ISO 20022 Business Model: a review is underway!.

Any business or organization generating high volumes of business communication for their customer base such as financial institutions, insurance companies, utilities, telcos, hospitals, or government agencies, has a critical need to disseminate the most up-to-date information quickly and accurately to end users. However, if a law is changed or terms/conditions are revised and the material reflecting these changes is either inaccurate or not distributed in a timely manner, an institution leaves itself vulnerable to potentially massive fines for non-compliance or even litigation.

Additionally, business and marketing users are pressed hard to keep up with shorter product lifecycles, rapidly shifting consumer behavior and new channels of customer communication. Yet too often their dependency on IT can make simple text or layout changes for marketing messages, legal disclaimers, logos, or new contract templates a matter of months and finally outvalue the potential gains. A common approach to overcome this dilemma is to decentralize document composition using standard office tools or island solutions but this again creates issues with compliance and CI and increased time-to-market and usually turns out to be even more inefficient and costlier.

The ideal solution would therefore unleash the power of multi-channel communications, reduce time-to-market, enable document reuse, and enforce compliance while business and marketing users retain control over their documents and reduce their dependency on IT.

The Papyrus Platform from ISIS Papyrus provides the ability to automatically close the communications loop across all channels and to deliver personalized communications, integrated marketing campaigns, TransPromo campaigns, and structured ad-hoc communication for increased customer retention while achieving full compliance through process-embedded regulation and audit control.

Watch the ISIS Papyrus presentation on video

This article is from E-invoicing Platform. Read the original post at: E-Documents: Cost savings and simplified compliance bij ISIS Papyrus.

IBM today announced the closing of its acquisition of Sterling Commerce.  The company expands IBM’s ability to help clients accelerate their interactions with customers, partners and suppliers through dynamic business networks using either on-premise or cloud delivery models.

Organizations are looking for ways to create more intelligent networks of business partners, customers and suppliers in order to enhance efficiency and profitability.  These interactions are increasing dramatically due to the proliferation of electronic business transactions, from banks exchanging transaction data and manufacturers sourcing raw materials electronically, to retailers automating stock replenishment and managing orders online.

Sterling Commerce provides software for cross-channel commerce and integration of customer, partner and supplier networks across a wide range of industries.  The combination of IBM and Sterling Commerce enables the integration of key business processes across channels and among trading partners – from marketing and selling to order management and fulfillment.

“We now offer a complete platform for multi-enterprise business transactions,” said Craig Hayman, general manager, IBM Industry Solutions.  “In combination with IBM’s existing offerings, Sterling Commerce, Coremetrics and Unica are expanding IBM’s ability to help companies automate, manage and accelerate core business processes across marketing, selling, order management and fulfillment.”

With the acquisition of Sterling Commerce, IBM advances its ability to help clients integrate and automate business processes, resulting in improved demand generation, customer experience and fulfillment.  Using the combined technologies of IBM and Sterling Commerce, clients have the flexibility to manage these processes – and their networks of business partners – through public or private cloud computing environments.

Since IBM announced its intent to acquire the company in May, Sterling Commerce has seen continued momentum with customers in both its business integration and commerce solutions businesses.  Sterling Commerce recently announced that Hostess Brands has implemented its B2B integration solutions both on-premise and as a service to improve Hostess’ supply chain performance.  In June, Cengage Learning went live with the latest version of Sterling Multi-Channel Selling to take advantage of new market segmentation and enhanced promotions functionality that enhance the customer experience of its award-winning website, CengageBrain.com.

“We view the IBM acquisition of Sterling Commerce as a positive move,” said Charles Qian, manager of eCommerce systems at Cengage Learning, a leading global provider of innovative teaching, learning and research solutions.  “Our recent implementation was seamless, and completed under a tight timeframe.  I expect the excellent solutions we have received from Sterling Commerce will only be enhanced under IBM.”

In addition to enhancing IBM’s integration and commerce offerings, Sterling Commerce software also complements IBM’s industry-focused software including the company’s frameworks supporting the retail, manufacturing, communications, health care and banking industries.

More than 18,000 global customers rely on Sterling Commerce’s offerings, including large companies such as Boston Market, Honeywell, Monsanto and Pitney Bowes. Outside the United States, Sterling Commerce’s customer list includes leading manufacturers like Toshiba and top retailers such as Auchan and John Lewis.

The acquisition builds on IBM’s growing portfolio of industry software solutions designed to help companies automate, manage and accelerate core business processes across marketing, selling, ordering and fulfillment.  IBM’s recent acquisitions of Sterling Commerce and Coremetrics and the intended acquisition of Unica will enhance the company’s ability to support clients’ needs in this growing market.

With the closing of this acquisition approximately 2,500 Sterling Commerce employees join IBM.  Consistent with IBM’s software strategy, IBM will continue to support Sterling Commerce’s clients while allowing them to take advantage of the broader IBM portfolio.

About IBM
For more information visit: www.ibm.com/smartwork/businessagility

This article is from E-invoicing Platform. Read the original post at: IBM completes acquisition of Sterling Commerce.

This community now welcomes both those who are interested in e-invoicing (or invoice automation) and parties who offer products and services in the field of e-invoicing.

As e-invoicing is encouraged across national borders, the EEI Platform is now part of a larger community which brings together users, experts and providers from across Europe.

The communities of Platform ELFA (NL) and EEI Platform (Europe) are linked, creating a large free of charge community for anyone who wishes to contact (future) users, experts, providers, suppliers and policy makers. Soon, the newly set up EEI Platform Belgium is expected to be added to this community. The mission of this community is to give e-invoicing and invoice automation an extra impulse in the Netherlands, Belgium and of course Europe.

This article is from E-invoicing Platform. Read the original post at: EEI Platform launches online community on e-invoicing.

Together with its sister party CSU and its liberal coalition partner (FDP), the government parties have constructed a 133 page coalition contract, which, in the chapter “Information and Media Society” declares intentions to expand eGovernment by increasing electronic communication options for both citizens and enterprises.

It says, “The German government’s technical communication requires concentration, standardisation, increased efficiency and a pooling of existing resources. Therefore we want to strengthen the government’s representative for Information Technology. We are examining how the government’s IT can in the future orient itself on open standards, taking open source solutions into account.”

The German online portal Linux Community asked the government’s IT representative what this statement would mean in practice. The speaker for the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Daniela-Alexandra Pietsch, explained it was too early to go into detail, but emphasised that, “only through the implementation of open standards and license-free standards will today’s and future highly complex IT systems be manageable”.

Pietsch expects that one of the main issues would be the development of a XML standard for data exchange inside and outside government bodies. She also called attention to XDOMEA, the first result of current efforts. XDOMEA is an XML format for the exchange of electronic documents, currently available in version 2.0. On the whole, the German government wants to set up a planning council to raise IT awareness. The council, Pietsch told Linux Community, will determine interoperability and security standards in the near future.

Source: www.epractice.eu

This article is from E-invoicing Platform. Read the original post at: German Government wants open standards and open source.

The first version of the EIF, published in 2004, gave definitions of open standards and recommended the use of open source software. In the new version of the EIF these references have been omitted. Now the document has a section on openness, writing that “interoperability can also be obtained without openness, for example via homogeneity of the ICT systems, which implies that all partners use, or agree to use, the same solution to implement a European Public Service.”

“The EIF is in danger”, says Karsten Gerloff, president of the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE). “This new draft is a threat to the interoperability of European eGovernment services, and a recipe to maintain and even increase vendor lock-in.”

In a letter sent on 6 November 2009, Gerloff urges the EU member states to make the European Commission withdraw the revision.

On the same day, the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) published ten suggestions to improve the draft. It argues for instance for a strong definition of open standards, to prevent patents from making standards incompatible with open source licences such as for instance the European Union Public Licence (EUPL).

According to OpenForum Europe the EU has abandoned its commitment to open standards. In a statement, Graham Taylor, CEO of OpenForum Europe on Monday said: “The drastic changes from the consultation document of 2008 to this document cannot be seen as resulting from the comments submitted through the public consultation, forcing us to conclude either that the Commission has been unduly influenced by pressures outside of the democratic and transparent process or that it is desperate to defend its own legacy procurement choices”.

According to the private IT news site, the draft was published by the Polish Ministry of Internal Affairs in late October 2009. It quoted a spokesperson for the European Commission who last week denied the document was official. However, a Dutch IT news site, a day earlier had already quoted Serge Novaretti, EIF project officer at IDABC, the European Commission’s unit for eGovernment policies, confirming the document. According to Novaretti, the message is still the same, it is just written in another way.

Update
The OSOR earlier reported the EU was to present its new EIF document on 12 November 2009 in Malmö, Sweden. That is not the case, says Karel De Vriendt, Head of the IDABC unit responsible for the OSOR project and the EIF draft. “We have sent a draft to the member states and asked for their comments. It is a draft and as such subject to change before being finalised.”

Source: www.epractice.eu

This article is from E-invoicing Platform. Read the original post at: Protests over new draft of EU’s interoperability instrument.

PEPPOL Deliverable D4.1 – Standard Basic eOrdering Format and Data Structure – Version 1.2 pending EC approval

Additional Documentation

d4-1-chapter-1-2013-preamble.pdf (1 MB)
Chapter 1 – Preamble

d4-1-chapter-2-2013-overview-about-the-peppol-project-and-scope-of-work-package-4.pdf (1 MB)

Chapter 2 – Overview about the PEPPOL Project and Scope of Work Package 4

d4-1-chapter-3-2013-interoperability-issues-in-eordering.pdf (1 MB)

Chapter 3 – Interoperability Issues in eOrdering

d4-1-chapter-4-2013-european-initiatives.pdf (1 MB)

Chapter 4 – European Initiatives

d4-1-chapter-5-2013-eordering-standardisation-approaches.pdf (1 MB)

Chapter 5 – eOrdering Standardisation Approaches

d4-1-chapter-6-2013-as-is-situation-in-eordering.pdf (1 MB)

Chapter 6 – As-Is Situation in eOrdering

d4-1-chapter-7-2013-eordering-specifications-and-pilot-approach.pdf (2 MB)

Chapter 7 – eOrdering Specifications and Pilot Approach

d4-1-chapter-8-2013-references.pdf (1 MB)

Chapter 8 – References

d4-1-chapter-9-2013-annex.pdf (1 MB)

Chapter 9 – Annex

(source: ePractice)

This article is from E-invoicing Platform. Read the original post at: PEPPOL: Standard Basic eOrdering Format and Data Structure.

The European Commission estimates that the potential cost savings of e-invoicing in the business-to-business sector will be €238 billion. The European Association for Corporate Treasurers puts the figure at €243 billion. According to Swiss-based consultancy Billentis, the unit costs of issuing paper-based invoices during the past year were in the range of ?8-18 (of which 40-50% could be saved by e-invoicing) and the unit costs of processing incoming paper-based invoices were in the range €11-32 (of which 60-90% could be saved). Given the current economic climate, such savings represent a very attractive proposition for corporates.

E-invoicing is also an attractive proposition for financial institutions, which have suffered huge losses and are focusing on transaction banking as a generator of fee income. The problem is that the area is bedevilled with challenges, including a lack of standards, a lack of definitions – and a lack of interest in some quarters.
The concept of e-invoicing has been around for many years. It aims to replace paper bills with electronic ones. Corporates can view invoices online, through a banking portal or other service and authorise them for payment. They can download invoices from the portal and automatically import them to their accounts payable or accounts receivable applications and archive them electronically to comply with statutory requirements.

What’s new about e-invoicing is that it is being linked with the single euro payments area. Because SEPA will standardise and harmonise payments processing across borders, it will significantly reduce the complexity of implementing e-invoicing solutions, according to SEPA: potential benefits at stake,  a report by Capgemini commissioned by the European Commission and published on the day SEPA came into effect in January 2008. Solutions will be more easily integrated into the back offices of sellers and buyers and because both sides of a transaction are using the same standards for payments processing, the challenges of compatibility between supplier and buyer will be greatly reduced. Moreover, “… the [Payment Services Directive] harmonises regulation and legislation, which lowers the barrier that regulation and legislation represent, though certain related barriers still remain (for example taxation)”, says the report.

Taxation is indeed a sticking point and is one that the EC is currently trying to fix. The EC’s VAT Directive has made matters worse, says Ifor Williams, sales director at Accountis, a developer of electronic invoicing, payment and document exchange services. Unsurprisingly for a European initiative, each country has chosen to interpret the Directive in its own way, leading to differences in tax treatment and invoicing standards. “The European Commission is aware of the problems with the VAT Directive and is working on revisions. Any revised directive shouldn’t differentiate in its treatment of paper and electronic invoices,” says Williams.

Antonella Vanara, payment systems marketing manager at Italian payments processor SIA-SSB, says pan-European interoperability of e-invoicing will require equal VAT treatment. “There are also obstacles to interoperability in the area of electronic signature standards. These standards are very complex and numerous – every country has its own. For example, in Italy, the digital signature must be issued by a qualified company that is accredited in Italy.”

According to a report from the Politecnico di Milano, basic standalone e-invoicing services are used by less than 1 company in 10 in Italy and the more integrated solutions are used by less than 1 in 30 companies.

As reported in Banking Technology’s Sibos Daily News in September 2008, Dutch/German payments processor Equens has teamed up with Italy’s ICBPI and Belgium’s Isabel in a joint electronic invoicing pilot that aims to establish an open, multiparty, cross-border e-invoicing network. Dave Rietveld, general manager for new business services at Equens, said it would take “a couple of years” before a European e-invoicing standard came into force and until that time local standards are well established and should be exploited. “It is too expensive for companies to invest in new standards, so our product bridges the current local standards, giving customers greater European reach.”

At present, pan-European e-invoicing is a concept, rather than a reality. However, advances have been made in national schemes, many of which could provide the basis of pan-European schemes once the interoperability problem has been ironed out. Public authorities are playing a role here, with the governments of Denmark, Italy, Spain and Finland mandating the use of e-invoices for business-to-government transactions. Says Vanara: “Some of the final features of the business to government sector have to be addressed, but once they have, this will be a real driver for e-invoicing in Italy, where current use is quite low.”

The Spanish government has driven the development of a legal framework for e-invoicing, a technical format and a website to help SMEs. SMEs are also able to obtain free software, attend events and get support, which totalled ?10 million in 2007 and ?43 million in 2008. By August 2009, all invoices sent to public administration bodies in Spain must be electronic.

In Finland, around 30% incoming and 40% of outgoing invoices are electronic. Unlike some other countries, Finland had not found the need for legislation to make this happen, Jere Reinikainen, a project manager at the State Treasury in Finland told the EXPP Summit in Frankfurt last September. Reinikainen said e-invoicing was considered a gateway product into e-government and e-business in general.

Bo Harald, chairman of the European Commission’s Expert Group on e-invoicing, says e-invoicing in Europe will be driven by the public sector because government authorities are the largest senders and receivers of invoices. “The Expert Group is very proud of the countries that have made a move to e-invoicing, but is also disappointed that more countries have not made such a commitment,” he says.

The Expert Group has been charged with developing a set of high level business requirements, which will cover the needs of all users and market participants; proposals to simplify the legal and regulatory framework for e-invoicing; and a vision for how the market could respond to user needs through network solutions supported by standards.

Nordic countries are quite advanced in their use of e-invoicing, says Gareth Lodge, a research director at financial industry analysts TowerGroup. “One of the reasons there are such high levels of EBPP and EIPP in the region is linked back to a banking crisis in the region about 12 years ago,” he says. “Banks had to shut hundreds of branches and one third of the industry’s workforce was laid off. But the banks still had to service customers, so they looked for other channels and this increased the reliance on electronic service delivery, which led to adoption of e-invoicing.”

Banks in the rest of Europe should take hold of the opportunities that will arise from the public sector, he says. “Most public authorities are required to deliver the best value to their clients, but the levels of investment to do this tends to be relatively low. They will be looking for a third party or a bank to help them introduce e-invoicing, so the question is, who will provide the best value in doing that?”

Accountis’ Williams says there is a good case for the banking network to be used for e-invoicing: “Invoices and purchase orders are just extra items in a business transaction that leads up to a payment being transacted. Banks are very good at handling payments, so the banking network should be used. E-invoicing is a very big opportunity for banks to gain extra transactional revenue that they don’t currently get.”

In June last year, The Royal Bank of Scotland announced it had signed a multi-year contract for Accountis’ electronic invoice presentment and payment technology, which it will use to provide VAT compliant e-invoicing services to corporate customers in the UK. The application provides detailed status information – such as proof of delivery, acceptance, query and approval status – for all documents involved in a business transaction, from purchase order to invoices. The service also provides real time dispute management.

Ian Watkinson, head of product innovation at RBS GTS UK, describes the services as a cheaper, faster and better way of processing invoices in a secure and VAT compliant manner. Among the first users of the service are local authorities, which says Watkinson, are aware that e-invoicing is an opportunity to deliver best practice and better value to tax payers. “E-invoicing helps local authorities to be more efficient and pay suppliers on time, which is a measure of how effective they are as organisations.”

Watkinson points up that in providing e-invoicing services, the bar should not be set “too high” for SMEs. Local authorities, for example, have a large and varied supplier base and therefore services should not be prohibitive for smaller, local suppliers he says, “In an accounts payable e-invoicing scenario, we don’t charge suppliers to register or connect to the service and we offer a range of connection options. If an SME can only print invoices, we have an option where we can capture the invoice print file before the document is printed, digitally sign the invoice and send it securely to the council. At the high end, large multinationals tend to generate their own format of data files reports out of their billing systems and they can securely connect their systems direct using the same service.”While e-invoicing has not developed as quickly as its proponents would want, there could be a silver lining to the cloud that is the global economic downturn. Says Watkinson: “Working capital management is very close to the hearts of suppliers today. E-invoicing services will help to improve how suppliers manage their days sales outstanding by providing them with the option to easily offer discounts on earlier payment terms. The service thereby facilitates the management of working capital, which is very important in this economic climate.”

Author: Heather McKenzie

Source: Bankingtech.com

This article is from E-invoicing Platform. Read the original post at: Opinion: Post no bills.

As stated in the interim report of the E-invoicing Expert Group communication is of the essence. More so this communication should not be one-off exercises but should be part of a regular plan and process to communicate regularly, both periodically and event driven.

The EEI Platform identifies four segments OBTAIN+KNOWLEDGE,  BUILDING+NETWORKS, SHARING+INFORMATION and PROMOTING+INTERESTS. These segments lead the way for a coherent set of activities and instrument, combined in a comprehensive activity plan for the year 2009.

The 2009 EEI Platform Activity Plan aims at generating the following activities and instruments:

- Best practices
Collecting and disclosing best practices on –cross border- e-invoicing and related domains

- Common body of definitions
Formerly part of the CEN/ISSS e-Invoice workshop but now part of the EEI Platform, the website www.einvoicen.com and its contents regarding a ‘Common Body of Definitions’ will be finished, reworked and presented mid 2009.

- Company Profiles
Members and Founding Partner will receive company profiles which enables them to broadcast their proposition, product and services throughout the EEI Platform channels.

- Documentation
Collecting and disclosing documents on –cross border- e-invoicing and related domains

- E-invoicing Innovation Guideline
A guideline for end users, service providers and accounting software suppliers how to effectively develop and implement e-invoicing into their existing portfolio of products and services.

- Internal newsletter
Members and Founding Partners are the first to learn from recent developments on e-invoicing, invoice automation and their related domains.

- Interaction Framework
An interoperability framework for the sole purpose of understanding each other in human interaction. See also the ‘Common Body of Definitions’

- Newsletter
Broadcasting a newsletter containing headlines, reflections, best practices, documents and events.

- Online community
Creating an online community by combining the website, the social network sites, forum and mailing lists into one single instrument.

- Social networks
Broadcasting and connecting using LinkedIN, Twitter, SlideShare, Forum, Youtube, and so on.

- Website
A website containing a total of more than 200 (this year) of fresh headlines, reflections, best practices, documents and events.

Similar to the successful Dutch initiative Platform ELFA from which the EEI Platform originated, only those activities and instrument are considered that:

-          can be guaranteed to be effectively and successfully carried out and

-          facilitate and promote the Founding Partners and Members and their investments in the EEI Platform.

The EEI Platform Activity Plan 2009 is distributed to non-members on request.

This article is from E-invoicing Platform. Read the original post at: The EEI Platform Activity Plan 2009.

This is a preliminary study by Siemens ansd Time.lex on the electronic provision of certificates and attestations usually required in public procurement procedures.
 
Description (short summary):
The Preliminary Study on the electronic provision of certificates and attestations in public procurement procedures aims to examine how different European countries (EU, candidate countries and EEA) currently manage the use of certificates and attestations in procurement procedures, particularly in an eProcurement context.

The goal of the study is to identify if and how electronic certificates and attestations are currently issued, accepted and validated in public procurement procedures across these countries, and if and how their eProcurement systems could be modified or amended to support non-national electronic certificates and attestations, thus facilitating cross border economic activities in these countries and contributing to the creation of an internal market for electronic procurements.

As a part of this study, a series of scenarios were created that could be used to build interoperability between existing eAttestation systems, i.e. to ensure that electronic attestations from a tenderer established in one country could be presented to a contracting authority in a different country. These scenarios were then comparatively assessed in order to determine the most efficient or promising ones, and roadmaps were subsequently drafted to implement the most favoured interoperability scenarios. Finally, the study presents a number of recommendations for future actions to gradually improve the availability and usability of electronic attestations in public procurement procedures.

The Final Report of the study has been published in September 2008, together with a report on the electronic attestations and certificates used in 32 European countries (National Country Profiles).

Read the entire report by clicking this link:

This article is from E-invoicing Platform. Read the original post at: Study: electronic provision of certificates and attestations.

Registration
Online registration for this workshop is now open. Attendance at the workshop is free of charge and open to everyone.

This event is in the past

This article is from E-invoicing Platform. Read the original post at: ETSI: 4th Security Workshop in Sophia Antilopis (F).

CEN/ISSS
CEN/ISSS published in 2003 – upon request of the European Commission – a report on the standardization aspects of the VAT Directive (“the eInvoicing Focus Group”), and, the Commission subsequently issued standardization mandate M/339 “in support of interoperability of electronic invoicing in the Community”. In support of the recommendations of the Focus Group, a CEN/ISSS Workshop was created.

CEN Workshop Agreements
This first established a work programme in response to the first phase of the mandate, then in a second phase developed consensus documents for publication as CEN Workshop Agreements. The published CWAs are available at: www.cenorm.be/isss and at: http://www.e-invoice-gateway.net/knowledgebase/

CEN/ISSS eInvoice Phase II
The general objective of Phase II is to stimulate further standardisation in the domain of electronic invoicing accross Europe. The aim is to support the following processes:

-   the compliance of electronic invoice implementations to Council Directive 2001/115/EC and the national
legislation with regard to e-invoicing;

-   the effective implementation of compliant electronic invoice systems in using emerging technologies
and business processes, in business-to-business as well as in business-to-government scenarios and;

-    the emerging network infrastructure of invoice operators throughout Europe.

You will find more information about the CEN ws on e-invoicing here:
http://www.cen.eu/CENORM/BusinessDomains/BusinessDomains/isss/activity/einvoicing_2.asp

CEN ISSS eInvoice Gateway
Phase II of the eInvoice workshop has been broken down into five seperate projects. One of these projects, called ‘enhanced adoption of electronic invoicing in business processes in Europe’ has led to the CEN/ISSS eInvoice Gateway.

The aim of the eInvoice Gateway is to identify the most appropriate national legal practices in the relevant fields of e-business, in order to contribute to the simplification and improvement of the administrative and regulatory framework for enterprises in e-business in the field of accounting.

eInvoice Gateway and the Country Information Managers (CIM’s)
Apart from standard functions on the eInvoice Gateway, such as calendar and documents related to the CEN/ISSS eInvoice Phase II Workshop (CWA’s), the focal lies at the Country Information Managers.

Country Information Managers, in short: CIM’s, are persons with a leading position in the area of e-invoicing in a specific country in Europe. The CIM’s should ensure that it is possible for native speakers of a country to transfer knowledge and share information for that specific country. Therefore promoting the participation of country representatives to the objective of the eInvoice Gateway, the CEN eInvoice Workshop and off course e-invoicing in general.

Each Member State of the European Union has the opportunity to deliver a CIM. The tasks of the CIM are:

-   identifying activities/companies/organizations in the field of e-invoicing in the own country and
informing these parties about this European-wide non-commercial activity;

-   informing about the platform’s mission (native speakers for requests of the respective country) in case
someone wants more information about this CEN activity

-   mentorship (in terms of usability engineering aspects and continuous improvement process aspects).

The number of working days per year needed to carry out a CIM’s tasks is very limited due to the fact that the platform offers easy-to-handle self-enlisting functionalities and easy-to-use search options. The CIM’s role therefore is only to act as a mentor for their own country.

This article is from E-invoicing Platform. Read the original post at: CEN eInvoice Gateway and the Country Information Managers.

The funds distribution process is typically viewed as being one of the least automated in the financial industry with faxes still widely used in the transaction process.

According to Tilman Fechter, executive director, Investment Fund Services, Clearstream, while the adoption of automation is increasing, the lack of a recognised and universal messaging standard for communication between banks and fund managers is hampering efforts.

“More and more senior people agree that fax is not the answer but the argument is what the standard will be – Swift? FIX? Proprietary protocols?”

Fechter says that, despite the efforts of Swift to promote its ISO-based standards, the fact that many banks and investment managers are on different versions creates an interoperability problem.

Many banks have only just migrated onto the ISO 15022 standard while fund managers connecting to Swift for the first time are going straight onto the newer 20022 version.

Swift will eventually become the dominant standard, says Fechter, and all counterparties may eventually be using the same version but it will be a long-term project that will take at least 20 years in all likelihood.

For its part, Clearstream, which is owned by Deutsche Börse, is offering investment management clients in Luxembourg, Ireland, Belgium and Switzerland the opportunity to communicate with its banking counterparts through its Central Facility for Funds product which will be extended to the UK market as of October this year.

“Swift strongly relies on people like us to support two counterparties using Swift but on different standards,” says Fechter who adds that the situation is not the fault of the messaging standards body but just a reflection of the way the market is structured.

“Swift is doing the right thing and there is nothing I can see that it could be doing better. It is just the state of the industry and you cannot force standards.”

Source: Sibos Online

This article is from E-invoicing Platform. Read the original post at: Funds industry standards could be years away, says Clearstream.

Day 1 – 8 December 2008
Programme starts 10.00

Opening by Peter Potgieser, ABN AMRO, Chairman CEN/ISSS e-Business Interoperability Forum and Equens speaker

Keynote: ICT standardization and eBusiness policy developments
Costas Andropoulos, Head of Unit, European Commission, Enterprise and Industry Directorate General

Practical examples papiNet implementation and deployment practice
Tom Meniga, Managing Director, Freecom

eBIZ-TIC project – eBusiness standards pilots in the textile and footwear industry
Piero De Sabbata or Milena Stefanova, ENEA eTrade UN/CEFACT speaker Interoperability between eInvoicing systems Anachron speaker Questions and answers

RFID and the Internet of things
Speaker from the European Commission, Information Society and Media Directorate General (tbc)

Beyond SOA: interoperability challenges in the Digital Ecosystem era
Pierfranco Ferronato, Chief Architect, Soluta.Net

ICT implications for energy consumption and growth
Reinhard Madlener, E.ON Energy Research Centre (tbc)

Day 2 – Tuesday 9 December 2008 
Programme starts 09.30

Critical issues – Title to be confirmed
Paul van Exel, USPI (tbc)

Education in e-business standards and standardization policy
Speaker to be confirmed

Methodologies for Global eBusiness test beds
Speaker tbc 
 
 
For more information, visit the website of CEN

This article is from E-invoicing Platform. Read the original post at: 4th eBIF Conference ‘e-Business interoperability practice’ in Utrecht (NL).

European e-invoicing solution
ICBPI Group and Equens will cooperate to bridge local solutions, enabling banks, corporates and service providers to extend their reach in Europe. Equens will bridge domestic service providers in order to create European coverage in the distribution of e-invoicing. Isabel will contribute its e-invoicing knowledge and experience. Other parties are invited to join this initiative in order to expand the e-invoicing community as soon as possible.

The European Commission aims to establish a mature e-invoicing framework by 2010 at the latest. E-invoicing is a field that potentially offers excellent opportunities. Over 90 percent of all invoicing worldwide is still performed on paper. This usually involves an extremely inefficient process of printing, distributing, scanning and archiving paper and re-entering data. There are now hundreds of initiatives in place for electronic invoicing on a national level. A specific, joint and international initiative is therefore an important next step.

According to Equens, invoicing should be as easy as paying. Michael Steinbach, Chairman of Equens’ Board of Directors: “We strongly believe that staying ahead in the European payment-processing market requires looking beyond the payments discipline as such. It requires in-depth knowledge of the future needs of banks and their customers, of technology and of applications.”

“As a market leader in payments and electronic invoicing services in Italy, we are focused on providing the best services in the Customer-to-Bank area,” says Giuseppe Capponcelli, Managing Director of ICBPI Group. “This cross-border joint initiative on e-invoicing will allow us to be a first mover in the European scenario and to enhance our corporate banking services. The first International e-invoicing pilot is a win-win initiative that allows the founding partners to extend their reachability to other important trade markets, as well as enabling ICBPI to offer competitive advantages to banks and more benefits to their corporate customers.”

As one of the leading providers of e-invoicing and electronic banking services in Belgium, Isabel is the first participant in this European e-invoicing initiative. Isabel will draw on its technical and business expertise in the SME market to contribute to the success of this e-invoicing pilot project. “This pilot project is a great opportunity to enhance our experience in electronic invoicing and to promote interoperability at European level,” says Luc Van Hecke, International Sales Manager of Isabel S.A.

About Equens
Equens SE is the first truly pan-European, full-service payment processor. As one of the largest and most innovative payment processors in Europe, Equens is leading the market for future-proof payments and card processing solutions. Thanks to an extensive and competitive service portfolio and a flexible, customer-orientated approach, the company seamlessly meets the requirements of the European payments market. With an annual volume of 7.3 billion payments and 2.1 billion POS and ATM transactions, Equens has a market share of more than 15% within the euro zone. By continuously pursuing further growth and translating the achieved synergy benefits and economies of scale into advantages for the customer, the company contributes to the efficiency of European payments.

For additional information, please visit http://www.equens.com

About ICBPI
The ICBPI Group is made up of highly specialised companies focusing on the design, planning and management of services for banks, financial institutions and insurance companies. ICBPI S.p.A. is specialised in traditional and innovative payment services, as well as financial and administrative services offered according to a BPO model. ICBPI also offers innovative and efficient solutions for the outsourced management of domestic and international payment systems (SEPA-compliant) for banks, Public Administrations and other companies. Key Client is focused on electronic payment systems (Cards, POS and ATM) and with HelpPhone on customer care services through a contact center. Oasi is a market leader in services such as managed systems, financial transaction tracking, reporting to the Central Bank, anti-money laundering and regulation compliance, retirement insurance fund management and data security.

For additional information, please visit http://www.icbpi.it

About Isabel
Isabel is a professional software developer and service provider specialising in bank automation and electronic invoicing. Isabel’s solutions are used by many financial institutions and associations all over Europe. 30 banks and 110,000 companies in Belgium are using Isabel online services. The Zoomit application developed by Isabel is integrated with the Internet banking solutions of the most important banks. It enables millions of consumers and SMEs to take advantage of e-invoicing technology. Isabel was founded in 1995 and has 130 employees.

For more information, please visit http://www.isabel.eu

This article is from E-invoicing Platform. Read the original post at: Joint initiative to create a European e-invoicing solution.

Equens says it will work with ICBPI to “bridge local solutions” in order to enable banks, corporates and service providers to extend their services in Europe.

Commenting on the project Giuseppe Capponcelli, MD, ICBPI Group, says: “This cross-border joint initiative on e-invoicing will allow us to be a first mover in the European scenario and to enhance our corporate banking services. The first international e-invoicing pilot is a win-win initiative that allows the founding partners to extend their reachability to other important trade markets.”

Isabel – which provides electronic banking and invoicing services – is the first to sign up, although other service providers will be invited to join the initiative says Equens.

Says Luc Van Hecke, international sales manager of Isabel: “This pilot project is a great opportunity to enhance our experience in electronic invoicing and to promote interoperability at European level.”

Equens estimates that over 90% of all invoicing worldwide is still paper-based.

The European Commission said last year that the introduction of the European electronic invoicing (EII) network could reduce supply chain costs by EUR243 billion across Europe and help to streamline business processes and drive innovation.

The introduction of an e-invoicing system for public sector firms in Denmark has saved an estimated EUR100-134 million per year, according to a report by an EC task force on e-invoicing.

The EC said it would set up a steering committee to oversee the establishment of a common invoicing framework that would allow businesses across the region to send invoices and receive corresponding payments electronically.

However separate research released by Sterling Commerce at Sibos has found that European businesses are being held back from implementing e-invoicing systems due to the complexity of addressing regulatory compliance requirements and legislation.

The survey of 400 IT managers in the UK, France, Germany and Italy conducted by Vanson Bourne found that the most pressing “e-invoicing concern” for businesses across Europe is “compliance with national e-invoicing legislation”.

In addition, more than half of the companies surveyed admitted they were concerned about supporting disparate e-invoicing systems across multiple geographies.

Chris Hayes, senior product marketing manager, Sterling Commerce, says: “The benefits of moving from paper-based to e-invoicing are widely known and accepted, yet the reality for many European businesses is that even for e-invoicing projects which do receive budget approval, a dependence on multiple solutions to handle compliance with multiple VAT and tax regulations across different territories, is ultimately undermining project success.”

Source: Sibos Online

This article is from E-invoicing Platform. Read the original post at: Equens partners ICBPI and Isabel on European e-invoicing pilot.

I was disappointed to find that one of the conclusions implies that electronic signature is seen as a barrier for further development of the electronic invoice, and a feature that some of the members of the expert group see as superfluous feature.

In my opinion, electronic documents need ways to reinforce security to allow to tell apart fake documents from authentic documents. Ths is generally true even for informative documents with less impact on companies results.

It is also true that electronic signature is not the only way to reinforce security regarding autenticity of documents. For example, a document can be assumed to be authentic if it is retrieved from a trusted source, even if it is not completed with an electronic signature. But then we must define what are the requirements of such “trusted sources” to keep that assumption.

On the other hand, both approaches, electronic signatures and reference or trusted sources (which in turn frecuently are based in electronic signature derived schemes) need more precise definition to avoid lack of interoperability, which, in my opinion is the real barrier for electronic invoice wide deployment.

Some common authenticity mechanisms are required both for electronic invoices (those that are born electronically from the beginning) and for invoices certified scanning (invoices digital copies that become equivalente to an original, after a security mechanism has been added to a common scanning).

This approach, “certified scanning”, has been initiated in Spain with high success.

Certified scanning is a process in which an electronic signature is applied to a image file while it is scanned from a document paper. This image is stored in a secured database and the main concepts and terms of the paper document are added as metadata to the contextual fields of the image file in the database.

Once a paper document is “certifiedly scanned” the digital copy becomes equivalente to an original, and the paper source can be destroyed. The new “electronic original” can then be used for auditing purposes.

For the companies that receive thousands of invoices, “certified scanning” adoption imply benefiting from most of the advantages of the electronic invoice without dealing with the slow adoption pace that their suppliers could show.

If we want to support “certified scanning” we need a common definition of the requirements for that conversion. And they should not be very different form the requirements for “electronic invoices” .

If we accept authenticity mechanisms not based in electronic signature, they should be common for both approaches. And if electronic signature is still to be used in the future as the authenticity mechanism of the electronic invoice, the broad options in variants should be reduced and clearly defined (in my opinion, the XL definition of CAdES -TS 101 733- or XAdES -TS 101 903- should be used, including both validation and timestamping, from the signer side).

Source: ePractice

This article is from E-invoicing Platform. Read the original post at: Future trends in electronic invoicing.