As a market analyst, I have monitored the market for around 20 years and around the world.
The development around the world is relatively different.
Worldwide, still more than 90% of the invoices are exchanged paper-based.
In some continents, we have a high adoption rate, for example in Europe and in the US,
just around 70% of the invoices are still paper-based.
The other 30% are preferred to be exchanged as a PDF invoice.
The private industry is ahead.
The private industry has always been the driver for electronic invoicing or any kind of innovation.
Typically, the larger ones pushed it forward.
They pushed the larger trading partners towards electronic invoicing.
All of these trading partners have different requirements
some want ANSI, others EDIFACT, XML, CSV, whatever
The reality today, and I'm sure for the next five years, is that multi-format, a multi-channel
environment is really required to practice electronic invoicing.
What is going on now in the market is that the governments are entering into the market
also as an electronic invoicing user, mainly on the inbound side.
The public sector is responsible for 60-80% of all procurements in a country.
Which means they are also a very, very large invoice receiver
and to process that in an optimised manner,
they increasingly push their suppliers to send them their invoices electronically.
The U.S. government is already mandating them,
they are in the final phase to mandate all suppliers from 2018.
2018 is also a milestone in Europe
when all governments will be prepared to receive invoices electronically.
I expect for sure a positive impact of all these business to government initiatives to the private sector.
In most countries between 45-65% of all companies in a country are suppliers to the public sector.
And if a public sector is mandating electronic invoicing, more than half of businesses are affected by that.
So I'm very, very happy that the public sector is going this way.
Unfortunately, most businesses start electronic invoicing coincidentally.
It's not a proactive approach.
For that reason, one of my key recommendations is to change from a reactive modus towards
a pro-active modus to start an electronic invoicing project.
Up to seven departments in a company are affected by an electronic invoicing project.
They have to bring these affected departments into the loop at an early stage
and they will definitely support that.
As it can be quite a huge project, larger companies are mostly multi-national,
they have cross-border invoices and electronic invoicing is an international project from day one.
If such a project is implemented, I mentioned it in my annual market report,
it can take 12-18 months for a large company to get up and running with electronic invoicing.
And they are ready for electronic invoicing, that is a perquisite.
What should never be forgotten is that electronic invoicing only works if all the trading partners,
or at least a large proportion of them, also support electronic invoicing.
And what is also key, if a company has a feeling about the structure of its suppliers,
what they are able to do, it is absolutely key to communicate with them, at least twice as
much as you believe you should communicate.
Of course it is not so easy for me to see the future, but I have some good information
in some countries that are ahead in a certain discipline.
And I believe to feel which developments will also take part in other countries.
Overall, what I believe is that electronic invoicing volume will annually grow each year
for the next five years: in Europe 15%, in North America 20% and in Asia 25%.
So, very, very strong growth rates.
What I also see, is that today we have too many PDF, image-based PDF invoices in the game.
Typically, 70-75% of all paperless invoices are image-based PDFs.
And this will no longer be sufficient in the future.
The market will become more demanding.
In addition to these image-based PDFs, the market is demanding for structured data,
as a parallel file or embedded into a PDF.
What I also see is the broadening of a scope, meaning the development beyond just electronic invoicing.
So purchasing processes, orders, and also, confirmations have to be included in digital
process chain, as well as the entire procurement finally, including resourcing and catalogs.
Another development is that tax authorities will become more and more influencing.
In an increasing number of countries they will mandate that market participants
exchange invoices per say just electronically.
This is already the case in Latin America, in Asia, in Southern Europe
and further countries will be affected by such mandates.
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét