Accountis Supports European EXPP Summit 2008
May 1st, 2008 by Susan
As posted on our website earlier this week, Accountis is once again delighted to support the EXPP Summit. The event is in its fourth year and promises to be bigger and better than ever. The venue is the Sheraton Frankfurt Hotel & Towers, Conference Centre in Germany. The conference is on 28th and 29th of September, followed by the E-Invoicing Operators forum on October 1st.
Event website: European EXPP Summit & Forum 2008
EIPP : A win-win situation for banks
May 1st, 2008 by SusanAccountis Sales Director Ifor Williams has written an article called “EIPP: Extending Payments to the Full Cycle” which looks at the opportunity e-invoicing holds for banks and discusses how they can take advantage of it. The article is currentlly on GTNews.com and here is an extract.
“The delivery of EIPP to corporates is a win-win situation for banks. Customers get the transparent, real-time liquidity management services they want. They also benefit from an outsourced service that covers everything, from purchase order initiation through to tailored financing based on the company’s accounts receivable. They receive rapid, accurate payment for their goods and services while lowering their operating costs.
From the bank’s perspective, services of this kind work because they create a ’stickier’ relationship that is mutually beneficial. Not only does the bank have a greater opportunity for cross-selling its products and services, it can also deliver a truly tailored lending portfolio while minimising risk. Additionally, banks have a unique advantage over in-house systems and business process outsourcers because they can combine e-invoicing services with their existing payment transactions.
Although e-invoicing is favoured by larger corporates typically serviced by the largest banks, there is no reason why smaller banks with SME customers cannot deliver similar services. Cost and complexity are key issues and smaller financial institutions must consider whether they have sufficient resources, for example IT support and infrastructure, to support an EIPP solution themselves or whether they can buy these services from a larger partner or provider. They may also need to be more creative about the nature of services they offer, perhaps concentrating on delivering a few core services to their SME clients.”
EIPP: Extending Payments to the Full Cycle
SEPA goes live!
January 30th, 2008 by SarahThe Single European Payments Area (SEPA) for credit transfers was launched this week, with the European Commission (EC) predicting potential savings of £268bn over the next six years.
Businesses in the Eurozone (i.e. the 15 nations that use the euro currency) should start to see faster and cheaper payments as of 28th January, as the new “SEPA Credit Transfer” service is launched.
Electronic payments in euro between different countries currently cost more than making a bank transfer in the same country. With the roll-out of the new standards over the next three years, SEPA will make all electronic payments in the Eurozone the same as making domestic payments, and guarantee that the money will pass from one bank account to another within three days.
The European Commission sees this as a logical extension to the introduction of the euro. As EU internal market and services commissioner, Charlie McCreevy explains: “SEPA will improve the efficiency and competitiveness of the single market and realise our ambition to make euro payments across the EU as easy, efficient and secure as domestic payments”.
Although the UK does not use the euro, businesses with a presence in the Eurozone will need to change their processing systems if they want to make lower cost SEPA transactions, and UK banks will need to upgrade systems to support it.
SEPA has initially been launched for credit transfers, but the facility is due to be extended to direct debits by 2009.
Click here for more information.
In the press – Computer Weekly
December 20th, 2007 by SarahComputer Weekly has picked up on our recent release about DHL’s Brian Thumwood speaking at the Electronic Invoicing and SEPA conferences in London earlier this month (see previous post December 4th). Brian spoke to Warwick Ashford about the benefits of the Accountis e-invoicing solution. DHL expects that the Accountis system will “cut out up to 336,000 paper invoices a year in the UK alone”. Given that the company has implemented the system in Belgium and Switzerland, as well as the UK, already and has plans to continue the roll out to 22 other European countries in the next two years, the impact on paper consumption alone will be enormous. To read the full article, visit the Computer Weekly website.
EIPP – “It’s a ‘win-win’ solution”
December 4th, 2007 by SarahBrian Thumwood, DHL’s e-billing Programme Manager, today spoke to delegates at the IIR’s joint Electronic Invoicing and Single Euro Payment Area (SEPA) conferences in London. Brian was once again able to illustrate the benefits of their Accountis EIPP solution using an on-line Flash demonstration, which can be viewed via the Accountis website. Any delegates present who were unsure of the benefits of e-invoicing would hopefully have been converted by Brian’s presentation – as Brian puts it: “It’s a ‘win-win’ solution”.
Another chance to hear DHL’s e-invoicing story first hand
October 31st, 2007 by SarahDon’t forget, for those of you who weren’t able to catch Brian Thumwood’s presentation on DHL’s e-invoicing solution at the EXPP Summit in September, you will have another chance at the forthcoming IIR 3rd Annual Conference on Electronic Invoicing taking place in London on Tuesday 4th December 2007.
Once again Brian will be sharing DHL’s e-invoicing experiences, as well as demonstrating the Accountis solution using the recently launched Flash demo.
The event will be followed by the IIR’s 7th Annual Conference on SEPA on Wednesday 5th and Thursday 6th December.
Full details of both events are available from the IIR Website.
Royal Mail Disputes……again
October 5th, 2007 by SarahIt doesn’t seem five minutes since the last round of Royal Mail strike action and yet here we are again in the middle of another dispute. From Thursday 4th to Wednesday 10th October there will be two 48 hour postal strikes. Worse still, the Communication Workers Union (CWU) expects that this will be followed by an “unspecified programme of weekly strikes” starting during the week commencing 15th October until the dispute has been resolved.
If the last round of strike action didn’t make you question the wisdom of sending your invoices by post, this latest dispute definitely will! To find out more about how electronic invoicing can save your business time and money click here.
EXPP: Standing room only
September 13th, 2007 by SarahMembers of the Accountis team have just returned from another highly successful EXPP Summit. The team was inundated with enquiries, helped by Accountis customer DHL’s extremely well received presentation.
There was standing room only during Brian Thumwood’s seminar “Delivering E-Invoicing Across Europe”. As part of his presentation, Brian was able to take the audience through DHL’s e-invoicing solution using its new Flash demonstration, which was launched at the event. The demonstration, which can be viewed via the Accountis website illustrates the simplicity of the Accountis e-invoicing system and the numerous benefits it can bring.
The Accountis team would like to thank all those delegates that they met with for their time at the show, and look forward to following up the numerous leads that were made.
Details of next year’s summit, which will be held in Frankfurt, will be available soon at www.expp-summit.com.
Chairman of EXPP Summit highlights latest European Trends
August 30th, 2007 by Sarah“Almost unnoticed, a dynamic revolution in invoice processing is under way.”
In the run up to the 3rd European EXPP Summit, Bruno Koch, one of Europe’s leading E-invoicing experts and chairman of the European EXPP Summit has undertaken a survey of leading providers, revealing that “applications and services for E-invoicing and EIPP are taking the markets by storm”.
Around 360,000 European corporate and other organisations were using E-invoicing in mid-2006. Further to his survey, Koch estimates that this figure will increase to 630,000 in 2007.
According to Koch, the highest growth rates are expected in the Nordic countries, the UK and Benelux. The processed B2B volume is expected to reach 420 million E-invoices this year (+75% compared to 2006). Due to this strong growth the B2B volume will then be higher than the B2C volume at 290 million (16%).
To find out how your business could participate in the invoice processing revolution click here.
To find out more about the EXPP Summit, being held on 10th and 11th September in London, click here.
A Corporate’s Experience of e-Invoicing
August 20th, 2007 by SarahAccountis customer DHL will be presenting at the IBC’s 3rd Annual Conference on Electronic Invoicing in London. Brian Thumwood, DHL’s e-Billing Programme Manager will be speaking to delegates about their experiences of implementing and running an e-invoicing system, as well as showing their recently launched Flash demo of the solution. His presentation will cover the following:
· Why we decided to re-engineer the accounts receivable functions
· Where were the efficiency barriers?
· Creating the electronic interface
· Achieving customer adoption
· Measuring the results
Full details of the event, which will be held on Tuesday 4th December 2007 at the Radisson SAS Portman, London, will be made available shortly.