EIPP (e-invoicing) and StartUp World

I missed Jason Busch’s presentation due to computer problems and thought of catching up on the live conversation taking place. Here is a transcript:

• Jason Busch: Hey guys … curious to hear what you thought I should have covered in my presentation, but did not
• Mark Perera: Jason great presentation, thank you very much for your support
• Mark Perera: Jason, do you think a Bloomberg terminal for procurement is on the horizon?
• Jason Busch: Not sure a Bloomberg per-se (procurement is too cheap to pay for one on everyone’s desktop, anyway), but the concept is what fascinates me given its usefulness in the financial markets. Procurement and operations professionals needs this type information ? the question is how will they gain access to it in the future in one place.
• Mark Perera: Jason, do you see Salesforce.com as possible wildcard or simple a platform for future on-demand providers?
• Jason Busch: It would be easy for them to buy an existing provider to get in the sector, but I don?t see the going in the that direction at this point (even though their President is ex-Ariba). The procurement App Exchange strategy is far more innovative than simply doing a footprint/financial expansion deal: http://www.salesforce.com/appexchange/category_list.jsp?NavCode__c=a0130000006P6IoAAK-38&
• Mark Perera: Jason, what the risks in taking a ‘best of breed’ approach to procurement technology? Is integration into these different systems a major problem?
• Jason Busch: Integration is becoming less of an issue in large part due to the acceptance of SaaS or On Demand solutions and the fact that there is very little that actually needs to be integrated in a real-time fashion into transactional systems (at least a this point in time). It is not a non-issue, but it?s one that organizations that care about improving their procurement performance should easily be able to get beyond.
• David Lee: Beyond cost savings and cost avoidance, are there any examples of innovation in the marketplace that come to mind.
• Mark Perera: Jason, We have seen a lot of consolidation in the procurement technology space, do you expect to see more of this activity in the next 6 months?
• Jason Busch: Absolutely there’s life beyond cost! Risk management is growing (SAS and D&B are some of the more interesting plays here).
• Jason Busch: There are far too many vendors out there who pretty much do the same thing that need to get rolled-up (both because their investors will get impatient and because the market does not need dozens of providers who do the same thing). So yes, we?ll see acquisitions and roll-ups. But from an innovation perspective, they won?t be terribly interesting (just like the recent deals we?ve seen).
• Sebastien Slek: As Procurement will become more and more strategic for companies, in terms of margin contributor, do you still foresee a future for platforms of exchange between similar competitors looking for best supplier source?

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I plan to attend Ariba’s “Spend Management Day” on 27 November 2007 in London. The event has been designed for Executives and Practitioners with providing practical and actionable information on to improve spend management initiatives including sharing best practices. You can find out more about here. 

According to Kate Roe of Ariba (UK):

“Although Ariba in the US have run Spend Management Days in the past, this is the first time for Ariba EMEA. We have run Solution Briefings before which are half-day sessions targeting a specific solution area such as Spend Visibility. Because of the success and demand of these, EMEA has decided to broaden the scope to cover several areas and run the session over 1 day. We are very excited to be hosting this first EMEA Spend Management Day.”

Two impressive speakers:

1. Duncan Jones, Senior Analyst, Forrester Research - It would be a pleasure to finally meet Forrester’s representative in the UK. Duncan also specialises in EIPP.
2. Stephen Wills FCIPS, MBA, Head of Procurement, AXA

I cannot ask for any better opportunity to get to know Ariba. I will also be meeting Serge Labouyrie, their EIPP Champion early next month. Are you attending this event? If not, what is stopping you from participating? Do share your thoughts. Do you know any other similar events taking place?

I expect to get away by around 5:30pm. Most likely, I will be driving and if anyone would like to meet me afterwards, do let me know. My route M25 -> M40 -> M5 ->M6 -> M56 -> M60. Awful lot of motorways, don’t you think?

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I have been working on and off on an Analyst Report on OB10 independently. OB10 knows what I am doing but it is not sponsored by them, and therefore remains 100% independent. Most Analyst Reports are sponsored, and sometimes even co-written by the sponsors themselves, which guarantees immediate ROI for the Analyst. If the document is then sold, the subsequent revenues pretty much equals to profit, as distribution costs becomes negligible. The sponsorship can also lead to non critical analysis, whereby Analyst ending up supporting and praising the company covered. Is this what you want? The danger of critique is that the company may no longer corporate with Analyst. Both parties need each other. So can there really be 100% independence? I think it is very much possible.

What would you like to see in this report? At present, it’s a very comprehensive half finished report. It’s no point producing something no one wants. Do you see a benefit of buying such a report? Will it help you understand OB10 and the market better? Do you know enough of OB10 therefore not seen any point in spending money on an unproven analyst report? What do you think?

Secondly, how much are you willing to pay for such a report? Yes, I hear, it depends on quality. Until you read it, you would not know whether it’s a quality report or not unless I release a chapter, and therefore, you must make the necessary assumptions based on what you have read in this blog so far, and the opinions you have of me. Can you suggest what you are willing to pay for such report, please? I will not hold you against what you suggest. So far, I had two suggestions from £150 and £4,000.  

And I need bit more persuasion from you to finish this well before X’mas. And many thanks in anticipation of your responses.

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Imran Ali’s e-mail just reminded me that I have not written about BarcampLeeds, which I attended on Saturday. An event full of networking and presentations opportunities! I had a decent crowd for my presentation, which had two halves - first looking at pros and cons of Wikis - the production environment, and then introducing edocr for post production interactivity. I also invited Guy Fraser, CEO of Adaptavist to contribute to the presentation, as his businesses is based on providing rich plug-ins and associated services for enterprise wikis. The audience came up with number of ways to improve the service.

Our video link with Ottowa never materialised with the result of giving a second presentation to the local audience. Unfortunately, I suffered from significant technical problems resulting in a disjointed presentation.

From the day’s presentations, Guy Fraser’s speech was the most inspiring. Guy spoke about how he set-up his company and created a market niche for Wiki plug-ins. Dean Sadler spoke about giving profitability more importance than anything else, and building an entry business application in five weeks under �4000. I have heard Lee Strafford’s story number of times, but for a first timer, it would no doubt have been very inspiring. Lee probably has the best story to tell, but after you hear it number of times, the impact begins to wear off. Bit like Ajaz Ahmed’s story. Both remarkable and now well heard by the Northern community. From my point, its what these exceptional individuals do now and in the future that matters the most.

Here are some facts taken from Imran’s e-mail:

• Organised in 28 days.
• 150 people registered interest, 106 got tickets and 90 showed on the day.
• Hosted 31 sessions divided into 4 tracks.
• Had 2 British Sign Language interpreters for the hard-of hearing.
• 30 pizzas, 112 cakes, 300 sandwiches, 168 sodas, 168 bottled waters, 125 smoothies, 56 juice boxes, 100 teas, 250 coffees and 8 pints of milk.
• Gave away 2 iPhones, 1 product (RED) iPod nano, 108 mugs, a Wii and PhotoShop CS3.

References:

• Simon Wheatley
• Graeme Moss
• Tom Smith
• Tim Waters
• Kevin Whitworth
• Ian Hay
• Mike Nolan
• Connect Yorkshire
• Peter Childs

Resources:

• Slides are available on Slideshare
• Published 531 photos on Flickr
• Blog posts on barcampleeds at Technorati

Responding to Imran’s queries:

• Keep details for the mailing list - no problem
• What went well - good mixture of people
• Repeat at the next BarCamp - everything plus add more goodies if you could
• The format, venue, networking, side events and sessions work - I would not change. It’s was simply superb. Thank you guys!
• Improvements for the next time - make sure systems are fully checked and maintain technical assistance throughout the event + voting should only be possible after all the events have completed + punctual start

The networking events left for this month:

• 22 Nov - Business North West
• 23 Nov - DSIC Breakfast meeting
• 23 Nov - NWDC meeting
• 27 Nov - OpenCoffee Manchester
• 27 Nov - Procuretechlive.net
• 29 Nov - NWAA meeting

Cannot attend Oracle Partner day, which is on tomorrow in London due to having a Board meeting - bad planning on my part!

Technorati Tags: Barcampleeds, edocr, imran Ali, Procuretechlive.net

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Do you upload documents to your web sites? If so, would you like to liven your web site by showing the thumbnails instead of the less attractive pdf icon? Then, please follow the following simple instructions:

1. Upload the document to edocr
2. Copy and paste the “thumbnail for your site” code
3. Enjoy

So, here is an example:

Code (copied)

<a href=”http://www.edocr.com/doc/20/navigating-invoice-presentment-and-payment-landscape” class=”active”><img src=”http://thumbnail.edocr.com/664afebbe3c9e16a89806c626d051957e5f5e093.jpg” alt=”Navigating the Invoice Presentment and Payment Landscape” title=”Read the Navigating the Invoice Presentment and Payment Landscape document” /></a>

Result

It cannot be any simpler than that. In addition, you get three for the effort of one.

1. You could upload a .doc file and collect the .pdf from edocr - in this case, using edocr as a pdf writer
2. edocr gives you much more publicity to your documents than your site most likely could (unless you are a large publisher of documents)
3. All the interactivity

And there is no cost to you whatsoever other than the time effort, which should not take more than few minutes the most.

Technorati Tags: edocr

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HansaWorld UK, a mid-range innovative accountancy software vendor has won the AccountancyAge Award for Mid-range Software Package of the Year for the second time. Above is the official press release courtesy of edocr, my favourite knowledge exchange. According to the press release: 

“HansaWorld has recorded between 5% and 15% growth each year since 1995, and the software ? which is available on Windows, Mac and Linux platforms ? is known for its exceptional functionality and breadth.”

What impresses me the most is not just above, but how Hansaworld has embraced new technologies to increase their own marketing activities and subsequent revenues. For example, I do not believe I approached Hansaworld regarding edocr. Yet they found us and now is a regular publisher. Click here for evidence. And click here for interactivity. And based on their publications, look at the level of innovation (bearing in mind, most accountancy software vendors still live in the dark ages!):

• SmartApps for mobile phones
• Hansaworld Business Phone for Skype

And to top all that, they got this blog post free of charge. Who else wants a similar treatment?

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BarcampLeeds is almost there, yes it is on tomorrow. This will be my first barcamp and I am really looking forward to it. I have been told that it is an event where you focus less on sales and marketing, but more on open dialogue, perhaps around a common theme. Instead of talking about e-invoicing, I have opted to talk about edocr without actually sounding like a sales pitch. Paul Robinson has helped me greatly to come up with a theme. So here goes…

Why Wikis suck for post production environment? Capturing the essence of document interactivity - a paradigm shift!

I am yet to start thinking about how to expand above. But in the meantime, here is the list of other excellent speeches planned for the day:

• Intelligent human-computer interfaces and their possibilities - Reinhold Behringer
• From start-up to £67m in 10 years - passing on the wisdom and hopefully not the pain - Lee Strafford
• From startup to £45m in 8 years (Learn from my mistakes ) or Launching BT BizBox a small business CRM solution in 5 weeks - Dean Sadler
• SEO Site Clinic - - Dominic Hodgson and Others
• Why big companies are missing a trick by ignoring social media - Ian Green
• Ladybank Company of Distillers - building a real co-creation business through the internet - Ian Green
• Unleashing social media and technology for the good of local communities - Stuart Bruce
• From Zero to Game in 30 Minutes - Tom Scott
• From a Mobile Telephone to a Computer - a Reality Dysfunction Ian Hay
• Why Wikis suck for post production environment? Capturing the essence of document interactivity - a paradigm shift Manoj Ranaweera - reference
• Drupal - Isriya Paireepairit
• Conquering Time and Space - A survivors guide to distributed dev team management - Ian Pringle
• ePaper? ShmePaper! - (how almost buying an ebook reader made me realise how cool the technology of books is) - 5m40s micropresentation, Guy Dickinson
• LiveCoding: Introduction to Ruby & TextMate - Caius Durling 
• How technology can drive regeneration in Northern Cities - Inventya, Valerie De Leonibus
• One of three talks that you can choose from now, Paul Robinson
• Dude! Where’s my hash? - a frank look at OS X after jumping from Windows and my experiences of the past 6 months - Dan Hardiker
• Mind over Matter - How to take control of your state of mind, and of others - Dan Hardiker
• Feed Mailer - (A little demo of Feed Mailer and a round up of the upcoming features) - John Slater & Chris Richardson (This is not 100% confirmed)
• Doodol: Collaborative Mapping & Hyperlocal Search in the Post-Google Era - Ikem Nzeribe

One of the other firsts for this event is that there will be a 1 hour live video linkup with BarCamp Ottowa giving number of Northern Companies a chance to put themselves on Canadian map, vice versa. Companies chosen for this event include meecard, BizBox, Yuuguu and edocr. Don’t you love Imran Ali for coming up with these great initiatives?

References:

• BarcampLeeds on 17th November 07

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We have reached the half point of November today, and what better to do than share some of our traffic figures (from 1st to 14th November 07) so far:

1. Hits 50,027
2. Unique visitors 44,940
3. Page views 126,802
4. New visitors 89.68%
5. Reached 137 countries
   • USA (58.57%)
   • UK (9.41%)
   • Canada (6.06%)
   • Australia (2.09%)
   • Germany (2.03%)
6. Keywords
   • EIPP (8.96%)
   • Paystream Advisors (3.08%)

Most business web sites never ever achieve this level of traffic. Hence proving another point why you ought to publish your public-facing documents to edocr today. The more you publish the more attention you get from us, the ever growing edocr community as well as the world. Make sure you add your URL to document description so that you create even more opportunities for knowledge seekers and referrers.

Let’s quickly look at traffic details for Oct 07 for three companies

• Ariba.com - 11,598
• OB10.com - 1,639
• edocr.com - 6,775 (5,160 according to Google Analytics)

Now, you need to take above with a pinch of salt, as there is disparity between Google Analytics and Compete for edocr, so same may be true about OB10 and Ariba. But the bottom line is we are attracting significantly more traffic than EIPP vendor sites.

So, this also creates an exciting opportunity for advertising on edocr. This could be done in number of ways (uploading is free). If interested, please get in touch through usual channels.

I must take this opportunity to thank the team for their superb work in getting edocr to where it is today. We just started - long path awaits us.

Update 1

OB10 confirmed that above traffic figures are a long way off. This shows that Compete has not got it right. It is also unclear why different analytical packages give figures vastly different from each other. Who is right and who is wrong is difficult to conclude. Wonder whether there are any standards related to traffic analysis, does anyone know?

Technorati Tags: edocr, eipp, ariba, ob10, compete, paystream advisors

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Recently I had a long conversation with Emanio, a vendor specialising in provision of EDI based products. I will cover the full story on another post with a proper introduction to Emanio. What came out is that whilst they believe EIPP is the future, they have not seen much evidence in terms of market penetration to be too concerned about EIPP.

Now are they in permanent denial of EIPP? Is EIPP really making the stride all consultants and vendors have you believed? Why do I call myself an EIPP Evangelist if I have these doubts?

The truth of the matter is whilst EIPP brings significant benefit, trading partner enrollment is still inundated with complexities - and the focus should continue to be on education education education. Yet all the major conferences are addressing the wrong crowd and continue to deny the education piece. Why, because it’s not sexy! What’s sexy is supply chain finance, dynamic discounting, roaming services, e-payable, SEPA, etc etc. Yes, that’s all great - but we are still trying to address the paper chase - the very basics. When are we going to wake up? EIPP will take much longer than we all hope to get traction. Don’t let it become another EDI. So keep shouting about EIPP as much as you can. The more we shout the less others can ignore.

What do you think about this emotional outburst? Time to get some sleep I hear…bye for now.

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Just following up from Will’s excellent post here, I came across a story from ioma, which speaks briefly about the importance of senior management buy-in for successfull EIPP project execution. Anyone who ever ran a project knows that people are the key in terms of successful delivery. Buy-in at the highest level is vital. A real killer for any project is movement of key people, especially the project champion. Give any project, you can always find a champion. Move the champion and you will see the emotional drive disappearing - ever heard of the term “pet project”. One of the key problems with large long projects are promotions. Obviously you want to promote good people to retain their continuous loyalty, but by doing this you end up moving them away from the project, thereby loosing the Champion. How do you manage such conflicting human resource issues?

According to Michelle Ross of RS Electronics (USA), the time spent on preparation of a business case was vital to senior management buy-in and subsequent execution. The benefits she identified include:

• Timely receipt of invoices by customers (increasing the ability to utilise discounts)
• Elimination of “lost” invoices in the mail by customers
• Notification that customer’s shipment is en route
• Reduction of time spent opening incoming mail
• Reduction in all associated mail costs for RS Electronics (paper, postage, clerical time, etc.)
• Possibility of improving RS Electronics cash flow cycle

To me, the greater advantage of any of these technologies are three fold:

• Ability to improve cash flow cycle, i.e. much improved working capital management
• Ability to improve profits by reducing operating costs
• Ability to bring operational efficiency and accountability - reduce wastage and increase value addition

There are lot more reasons than this why you ought to consider e-invoicing/EIPP solution. In some cases, the key driver may not be any of the above reasons, it may well be the most trivial. This again proves that what’s important to one person or an organisation may not necessarily be important to another.

Crawling through edocr library of EIPP documents, I found these three gems written by none other than Accountis. These should help any business think about developing a business case for senior management buy-in as well as recording initial objectives, giving an early opportunity for accountability.  

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Over the last six months or so, Stewart Townsend has been working hard to bring Sun StartUp Essential programme to the UK. Whilst the details are yet to be finalised, a soft launched is planned for in December at Mashup* Events, with main launch taking place in early 2008. If you want to be part of this exciting launch, book a seat at:

• Mashup* DEMO on 5th Dec 07 in London
• NW StartUp 2.0 DEMO + Mashup* Manchester on 6th Dec 07 in Manchester

References:

• OpenCoffee London - Meeting the team behind Sun StartUp Essentials programme
• Sun Microsystems #1 - StartUp Essentials

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I do not normally cover technology news unless it is related to EIPP or ERP. But this is quite a big story - Dell selling Solaris operating system software. Sun declares the reasons for this partnership as market momentum and customer demand. Solaris will be shipped on selected Dell PowerEdge Servers. Dell is believed to be the third major vendor to endorse Solaris OS this year. Further information can be access through here

This is also great news for Sun ISV partners, who can now sell into Dell customer base. ebdex used to be an ISV partner of Sun Microsystems, and perhaps still is. But these days we are concentrating on providing advisory services and not involved with any product offerings. Yes, I still got couple of Sun boxes in my office - impressive designs.

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I spent a little while today discussing web-based auto-enrollment payments in the credit and collections industry, as well as what we call the “Payment Tsar” and the “Payment Quotient.” While I was doing so, it occured to me the extent to which electronic financial tools for the individual consumer are changing the nature of expectations and deliverables in corporate financial process optimization.

For example, EIPP has been around, but hasn’t entirely taken off. The technology has obvious advantages, but even major players like Ariba and OB10 don’t exactly have the market penetration that would reflect the service they offer.

But what I’ve noticed is that as customer banking tools are becomming more sophisticated, the expectations for what is possible in the corporate world are driving the discussion in a new and exciting way.

For example, it was the innovators who drove the EIPP technology into the forefront, because they saw the savings and process advantages. However, as more and more people saw they could achieve an enormous amount of visibility into their own finances with on-line banking and auto-bill-pay, now C-Level types are scratching their heads wondering why they can’t get the same Spend Analysis across their entire company.

This issue of innovation-drive is really a key when it comes to solutions available for corporate financial automation. The market, by and large, has not yet demanded the sort of solutions that “put it all together” until fairly recently, which is why Manoj continues to be an EIPP Evangelizer and not yet an EIPP I-Told-You-So-er.

At the same time, I don’t think that day is too far off now. With the acquisitions of Xign and Harbor, and as well the startling growth of OB10, Transcepta and Ariba, it is clear that many in the industry are beginning to believe EIPP and other next-generation tools are the next big step in business process improvement. It is quite possible we’re seeing a serious movement of next-generation automation technologies migrating from “early adopter” status to wide-spread implementation.

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Are you a startup or early stage digital technology company? Or have you got a killer idea with some early code you want to tell others about? Are you looking for seedcorn or second round of funding, team members, mentors, partners, and/or ideas to commercialise your product? Do you need help writing the business plan? Or do you just like to hang out with startups? Have you got loads of money and love to invest in startups? Do you provide support services (e.g. PR)? Are you a blogger or journalist looking for breaking news? If so, register now to secure a place at NW StartUp 2.0 DEMO.

It’s a free event run back-to-back with Mashup Manchester, giving opportunity for Northern startup and early stage software companies as well as those individuals who might have early stage prototype or an idea they want to demonstrate and/or share with other attendees.

Programme: 5pm to 6:15pm on 6th December 2007
Venue: Sun Microsystems, City Gate, Cross Street, Sale, M33 7JF (click here for map)
Condition: Must vacate premises by 6:30pm unless you have registered for catered Mashup Manchester event on Content 2.0. Failure to honour this condition will result in requesting immediate payment. A White Knight has stepped in to sponsor few individuals. If interested e-mail manoj@ranaweera.name.

Companies accepted so far for DEMO:

1. Yuuguu - also presenting at Mashup Manchester same night
2. ShareNow - also presenting at Mashup Manchester same night
3. edocr - Update since presenting at Mashup Manchester 1
4. NetRecords
5. Vagueware
6. Meecard - Update since presenting at Mashup Manchester 1

Programme for Mashup Manchester - Content 2.0 from 6:30pm onwards:

1. Moderators: Manoj Ranaweera and Simon Grice
2. Speaker 1: Sam Sethi of Blognation
3. Speaker 2: Awaiting confirmation
4. Company Presentation 1: Yuuguu
5. Company Presentation 2: Sharenow
6. Company Presentation 3: Up for grabs

You must register for Mashup Manchester on Mashup Site if you intent to attend the evening event.

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Here is a collection of two recent documents published on to edocr on EIPP and related subjects:

Causeway Technologies: A Case Study describing how a plant hire business, GAP, successfully adopted electronic invoicing solution from Causeway Technologies, and achieved both a reduction in operating costs and an increase in sales.

Paystream Advisors A webinar from Paystream Advisors on reasons why automation pays off, where does Imaging and workflow fit, hot trends in Procure-to-Pay(P2P) automation, learn from the innovators, and getting results.

 edocr also hosts a full collection of public-facing documents from Accountis, in addition to covering Nacha, DDC HRO, Ariba, United Data to name a few.

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