EIPP (e-invoicing) and StartUp World

Speaker 1 - Anish Kapoor - CEO of Yuuguu

Anish was co-founder of TeleCity PLC, the pioneering European collocation and data centre service provider. He is currently NXD for Jacamar, an online gaming infrastructure provider and a NXD for Xware, a mobile gaming software developer. In addition he has held various executive roles at EXML Systems a mobile software applications developer.

Speaker 2 - Ed French - Investment Director - Rising Stars - Enterprise Ventures

Edward joined EV in 2002, initially to help set up the RisingStars Growth Fund and later to assess and complete technology investments. Edward has assessed several hundred business propositions and has completed investments to date mainly in software and medical technology.

Prior to joining EV, Edward ran a technology transfer business based at the University of Bradford where he completed numerous licence deals and patents, and founded, and funded seven new spin-out companies, mainly in Telecoms, Medical Technology and Software.

Edward served as Chairman of Unico, the University Companies Association, which deals with issues associated with creating spin-out companies from University technology. During this time Edward gained useful exposure to building technology business teams, IP strategy work and financing, building upon the experience before Bradford of managing product development, sales and manufacturing in a number of engineering businesses.

Edward won a sponsorship from the National Engineering Laboratory to study Engineering Science at Cambridge, and has an MBA from the Bradford School of Management.

Speaker 3 - Robert Wakeling - CEO Wadaro

Robert Wakeling, CEO - Robert is the founder of Wadaro Limited and has been principle in early business development, in securing support from partners & advisors and prospective investors.  Prior to Wadaro, Robert held executive management positions at Openwave Inc. (NASDAQ:OPWV) and Magic4 Limited (acquired by OPWV).  In his time at these two companies, Robert conceived a number of products now shipping in over a quarter of a billion mobile phones world-wide and is putting his industry knowledge and contacts to good use at Wadaro.

Speaker 4 - Mark Birbeck - Founder and CEO of X-Port Ltd

Founder and CEO of X-Port Ltd, the company behind formsPlayer, an XForms processor that fully implements the W3C’s XForms specification. He is also the founder of Sidewinder, a company building a next-generation semantic web browser that seamlessly combines XForms with other languages such as SVG, MathML and X3D. He has nearly 30 years experience in software development, and has contributed to books and written articles on XForms, RDF, and XML.

He is an Invited Expert on both the XForms and HTML W3C Working Groups where he is particularly involved in the development of XHTML 2, a semantic-based version of XHTML. His most recent work for the W3C has involved proposing and developing RDFa, a new and simpler way to mark up RDF in documents without having to use RDF/XML.

Speaker 5 - Rhys Jones - Founder of Accountis Ltd

Rhys co-founded SecureTrading Ltd in 1996 and oversaw its growth to a highly specialised internet credit card processing company leading the UK market. He continued as MD for a further 18 months after the sale of the company to an investment group in early 2000. Rhys has pioneered many internet technologies, including distributed search engines, Java database adaptors, UK, European and US credit and debit processing systems, and advanced encryption and digital signature implementations.

Tags: Rhys Jones, Mark Birbeck, Robert Wakeling, Ed French, Anish Kapoor, Yuuguu, Rising Stars, Wadaro, Accountis, X-Port

Popularity: 22% [?]

Share This

Copyright: Billentis

According to Billentis, number of B2B e-invoices exchanged in Europe will grow by 75% from 240 million to 420 million. This is still a small fraction of the overall invoicing market constituting both paper and e-invoices. According to the presentation given by Bruno Koch at ExPP summit, the average number of e-invoices exchanged in Europe was around 123 million in 2005. This shows a remarkable upside for e-invoicing expectations in 2007, finally getting some traction.

Thanks Accountis Blog for the tip.

As seen from above sketch, Nordic countries continue to lead the market with just under 10% penetration, whilst Britain and rest of Europe lag behind with 1 to 3% penetration.

Both Accountis and OB10 are expected to increase their market penetration into both the UK and European market whilst Causeway Technologies Continues to increase its share of the UK construction industry. Burns e-Commerce has not recently reported any new client wins, but believe to be concentrating their efforts on leveraging further value out of existing clients whilst targeting multinationals with longer buying cycles.

Tags: Accountis, Billentis, Bruno Koch, ExPP, EIPP, e-invoicing, e-invoicing market size, e-invoicing market penetration,  OB10, Causeway Technologies, Burns e-Commerce

Popularity: 19% [?]

Share This

According to today’s blog post from Accountis, they expect to handle over 5 million e-invoices for one of their clients. Looking at their client portfolio on the website, I assume this has to be DHL. This is a remarkable achievement for Accountis. Other clients identified on the website includes:

• Abbey International (Isle of Man)
• Christian Salvesen
• Conwy Council
• DHL
• Ericsson
• Expotel
• Goodyear Dunlop
• G4S Cash Services
• ICICI Bank
• Islington Council
• Jersey Telecom
• Liverpool FC
• North West Wales NHS Trust
• Paragon Group
• Salford City Council
• Scottish and Southern Energy
• Singer & Friedlander
• T-Mobile
• Veolia Water UK
• Virgin Retail

However, it is not clear which of above companies are e-invoicing clients, as Accountis also offer BACSTEL-IP solutions.

Tags: Accountis, DHL, e-invoicing, EIPP, BACSTEL-IP

Popularity: 18% [?]

Share This

Click here to listen to an interview given by Jamie Gunn, CEO of OB10.

Tags: OB10, Jamie Gunn, EIPP, e-invoicing

Popularity: 26% [?]

Share This

The pre-qualification process for selecting an e-invoicing system for East Riding of Yorkshire Council started in August 06. In Jan 2007, OB10 announced award of a three year contract by the council.

What is amazing is the short buying cycle! This proves that the council has done its home work and was genuinely interested in the benefits. Here is an extract from the news brief:

We have always strived to improve our operational efficiencies, and maintain good relations with suppliers. said Nigel Pearson, Chief Executive, East Riding of Yorkshire Council. With the implementation of the OB10 solution we will continue to build upon the achievements already made and comply with the Government efficiency agenda, which includes freeing up resources that can be allocated to front line services.

“We are delighted to be working with the East Riding Council, and look forward to helping it achieve its goals of improving efficiency and overall supplier relations,” said Jamie Gunn, CEO OB10. “The new Government initiatives create a perfect case for implementing e-Invoicing within the public sector, and the OB10 solution contributes to the Government agenda regarding e-procurement and the ability to receive supplier invoices electronically.”

Tags: OB10, e-invoicing, EIPP, Jamie Gunn, East Riding of Yorkshire Council

Popularity: 21% [?]

Share This

You might be interested in this slide pack from Ben Holmes of Index Ventures who presented at last week’s Future Of Web Apps. Thanks Imran for pointing me to this.

It’s the first time I came across slideshare. What a great idea! Something everyone could do with. Just like Youtube! What about a similar platform for documents. Now that’s an idea worth pursuing.

Tags: Ben Holmes, Index Ventures, Venture Capital, Imran Ali, Future of Web Applications, Slideshare

Popularity: 7% [?]

Share This

If you are keen to register for the above event taking place at KPMG on 15th March, you could do so now by clicking here. Thanks to Ixis, we now have a more permanent home at http://www.nwstartup20.co.uk. This will allow me to organise different types of events easily. Few events I have in mind (not firmed up yet):

• April - e-invoicing
• April - web 2.0
• May - NW StartUp 2.0

Would above be of interest to you? Would you like me to organise any other?

Tags: KPMG, NW StartUp 2.0

Popularity: 8% [?]

Share This

Here is a video clip from Youtube that is worth watching…

I am the mighty finder - I can find anything - you can run but you cannot hide.

Tags: Youtube, Microsoft, Apple, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates

Popularity: 17% [?]

Share This

Some of the blog aggregators you might want to consider:

• Footy 24/7 aggregates news, blogs, videos and images from official sites of premiership foot ball clubs. This is a rich medium with pictures and videos. Platform chosen is Drupal. 
• Planet Enterprise 2.0 run by Rhys Jones, the founder of Accountis aggregates content on enterprise 2.0 (web 2.0 related to the enterprise, i.e. B2B instead of consumer led). Rhys uses Chumpologica (RDF) platform. Blogs aggregated include (the previous Youtube video came from this site):
  • Dion Hinchcliffe (feed)
  • Peter Rip (feed)
  • Sean (feed)
  • Ross Mayfield (feed)
  • Dion Hinchcliffe (feed)
  • Andrew McAfee (feed)
  • Loek Bakker (feed)
  • Steve Eisner (feed)
  • JP Rangaswami (feed)
  • Michael Platt (feed)
  • Rod Boothby (feed)
  • Richard MacManus (feed)
  • Jerry Bowles (feed)
• Enterprise Irregulars (EI), a diverse group of practitioners, consultants, investors, journalists, analysts and full time bloggers who share a common passion -  enterprise technology and its application to business in the 21st century. Platform used is Blogtronix, and key bloggers include:
  • AccMan - Dennis Howlett
  • Andrew McAfee - HBS
  • Business Two Zero - David Terrar
  • Charles Zedlewski - Yet Another Software Blog
  • Charlie Wood - Moonwatcher
  • Dan Farber - Between the Lines
  • David Tebbutt’s Teblog
  • Deal Architect - Vinnie Mirchandani
  • Dion Hinchcliffe’s Web 2.0 Blog
  • Erik Keller
  • Feld Thoughts - Brad Feld
  • Frank Koehntopp - The GadgetGuy
  • Gary Turner - memoria technica
  • Ismael Ghalimi - IT|Redux
  • J. Bruce Daley - siebelobserver
  • Jason Corsello - The Human Capitalist
  • Jason Wood - The Ponderings of Woodrow
  • Jeff Clavier’s Software Only
  • Jeff Nolan - Venture Chronicles
  • John Sun - Mobile Analyst Watch
  • Joshua Greenbaum - Enterprise Anti-matter
  • Journal - Bruno Haid
  • Mark Crofton - The Village View
  • Niel Robertson - Parallax
  • Phil Wainewright’s Software as Services
  • Ramana Rao’s Information Flow
  • Robert Halsey - Constant Bearing, Decreasing Range
  • Rod Boothby - Innovation Creators
  • Ross Mayfield’s Weblog
  • Sadagopan
  • Susan Scrupski - ITSinsider
  • Thomas Foydel - SightLines
  • Thomas Otter - Vendorprisey
  • Zoli’s Blog

The EI site is still in beta, and my member site sometimes shows posts from my blog and sometimes it does not. Disclaimer: Please note that I am not an EI yet.

Tags: Footy 24/7, Planet Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise Irregulars, Weblog aggregation

Powered by Qumana

Popularity: 15% [?]

Share This

This is just to announce that a Google Group has been set-up for the NW Start-Up events. Site can be access through here. Its bit rusty at present. That’s it for now. I am switching off.

Tags: NW StartUp 2.0, Google groups

Popularity: 7% [?]

Share This

As my mid afternoon appointment got cancelled after I arrived in London, I have been blogging and organising the speakers and website for the NW Start Up 2.0 event. I just secured the third and fourth speakers, Robert Wakeling, Founder and CEO of Wadaro and Mark Birbeck of X-Port. Later today, I will be attending my first mashup event in London organised by the Vecosys boys. I will be meeting Mark for the first time. We chatted on Skype for the first time today. Yet he agreed to be a speaker. Internet is great. Web 2.0 stuff is even better for networking!

North West now has a startup/investment gathering (thanks to moi! - will keep this free as long as I can) and has many technology based gatherings. What it seems to be missing is a mashup type event!

1.  Does anyone think it is a good idea to explore the possibility of holding mashup events every 3 months in Manchester?
2. And if so, are you willing to pay £20 to £30 to attend an event (I/ebdex can’t run everything free - there need to be a ROI somewhere down the line!)
3. Or does anyone else wants to organise this type of event?

By the way, I need to check the ownership/copy rights associated with "mashup" and this may be owned by Simon Grice! Simon continues to support NW StartUp by donating webspace on his etribes platform.

Not bad for an afternoon’s effort!

Tags: NW StartUp 2.0, mashup, Wadaro, Vecosys, Robert Wakeling

Popularity: 6% [?]

Share This

Just a quick note to say that the next NW StartUp 2.0 event will be held at KPMG Manchester, sponsored by KPMG. The objective continues be to bring software entrepreneurs and investment community under one roof. Doors will be opened at 18:30.

Programme:

• 18:30-19:15 - Networking

• 19:15-19:45 - Speakers

• 19:45-20:15 - Q&A/Panel

• 20:15-21:15 - Networking

Then move to local bar for continuing with networking.

Speakers (confirmed)

• Anish Kapoor - CEO of Yuuguu
• Ed French - Investment Director - Rising Stars (Enterprise Ventures) 

Promotional sites:

• http://www.etribes.com/startup20 - this would be the key site. I am waiting for Simon Grice to activate registration screen.
• http://upcoming.org/event/154621/ - you would still need to register on etribes once the registration screen is live
• and this blog

Please do spread the word.

Tags: NW StartUp 2.0, entrepreneurship, startup, KPMG, Manchester, Anish Kapoor, Ed French, Yuuguu, Rising Stars, Enterprise Ventures

Popularity: 35% [?]

Share This

Paul Walsh, CEO of Segala has come up with a cunning plan (reminds me of Blackaddder!) to increase traffic to his blog. But in the process, he also wants to help his so called blogger friends increase traffic to their blogs. And I am the first sucker!

Hey readers, here is a chance for you to win an iPod on March 2nd 2007. All you have to do is submit a comment to this post, that’s it. So, here is how it works. If this post has a higher word count than any other entry in Paul Walsh’s viral game, one of my commentators will be picked out of a hat. Naturally the comments must make some sense and they must be contextual. The winning name will be pick out of a hat by Paul Walsh at Segala.

So all you have to do is keep adding comments to this post. Good luck!

Tags: Viral blog game, Paul Walsh, Segala

Popularity: 14% [?]

Share This

Can you describe yourself in one word? If so what would it be? Think before you type it in. It may reflect:

• Who you are
• What your aspirations are
• What you do
• What you have achieved
• Your wins and losses to date
• Risks your have taken
• Your wealth
• etc etc.

For me, it has to be “opportunist”. Please also give justification - why you think you qualify to use the word you have chosen to describe yourself.

My explanation: the concept behind ebdex Document Exchange is not my own. I came across it. Refined it. And decided to create a business. Right now, I am also working on other opportunities.

Update (counter):

So far:

• Helper - 1
• Instigator - 1
• Opportunist - 1
• Quarterback - 1

Tags: Silly Game, Viral Blog Game

Popularity: 12% [?]

Share This

Here is the full story from Accountis’ blog (uncut):

We recently carried out a short e-invoicing survey on behalf of one of our clients. Out of about 400 potential suppliers interviewed the vast majority were very keen to adopt EIPP and make the switch from paper to electronic to receive e-purchase orders and send e-invoices. We spoke to key decision makers on e-invoicing, mainly Finance Directors, and most of them were aware of the benefits associated with e-invoicing and were happy to start sending e-invoices if requested to do so by one of their customers.

Despite an overall positive response, there were a few who expressed concerns, mainly to do with compatibility or processing issues. They feared that e-invoicing may not exactly mirror or integrate with their existing paper-based process. However, in most cases we had a simple solution for any issue/question raised and with a little education we were able to highlight the real flexibility and benefit of sending e-invoices. I though it may be interesting to go through some of the issues raised by the suppliers interviewed and explain how they can be addressed:

Q. We don’t want to change our existing finance system.
Q. It will be a pain to implement e-invoicing just for one customer.
Q. Our invoices are printed on headed paper, will they look the same?

Q: We don’t want to change our existing finance system.
A. You don’t have to. E-invoicing works alongside any existing system so you don’t need to change the way you do things currently. At its simplest, you can login to your customer’s e-invoicing portal to create and send an e-invoice by filling in and submitting an online form. You can also generate e-invoices directly from any software package such as Word, Excel, Sage, QuickBooks etc. by printing to a special e-invoicing printer rather than your usual office inkjet or laser printer (click here to see how this works). Finally they have the option to create and send e-invoices direct from an existing ERP system finance package using one of the available plug-in modules.

Q: It will be a pain to implement e-invoicing just for one customer.
A. E-invoicing is simple to set-up and easy to use – it actually takes the pain out of invoicing for you and your customers. Users of the Accountis system are pleasantly surprised at how little work is involved in setting up e-invoicing, and the immediate benefits far outweigh any minor inconveniences during set-up (see the “benefits of sending e-invoices”). Also, once you are sending invoices to one customer, why not send all your invoices this way? Have you discussed e-invoicing with your customers? You may be surprised at how many of them would actually prefer this option if it was offered to them. More and more businesses are using Accountis everyday, so it’s possible that some of your customer’s may already be processing financial documents in this way.

Q: Our invoices are printed on headed paper, will the e-invoices look the same?
A. The will look exactly the same. All e-invoices are set-up to mirror your paper invoices in every way. They can exactly follow your corporate layout and style, and include any additional features such as special contact details or marketing messages. So instead of printing to your usual printer, why not save paper, ink and other resources by selecting the virtual e-invoicing printer instead. This automatically generates a digitally signed e-invoice and sends it to your customer over the Internet in a matter of seconds.

Thanks Susan.

Tags: Accountis, e-invoicing, EIPP

Popularity: 11% [?]

Share This