EIPP (e-invoicing) and StartUp World

This is almost a note to myself. Taking stock of what I am up to or not up to. I have three companies:

• edocr - well you know about this one! If not, shame on you! Are all your public facing documents available on edocr? If not, please act now…
• eveo - event management. Currently manages Northern StartUp 2.0 events, Digital Futures with Simon Grice in Manchester and potential e-invoicing seminar is July 08
• evigon - no transactions to date. My personal management consultancy firm for servicing opportunities as they arise

The future certainly is with edocr, which has a startup team comprising of Rhys Jones (Accountis, Sanoodi, etc), Mike Carter (Ixis IT), Chris Haslam (Ixis IT and footy247.co.uk) and Stuart Scott-Goldstone (Aaron and Partners) with PR support from Susan Tonge (SmithandSmithPR). This means responsibility and meeting expectations. On the other hand eveo and evigon are solely owned by me with no others involved except on project or event basis.

The Northern StartUp 2.0 complements what I am doing with edocr by providing a lever to leverage. This has already produced decent returns. Therefore, irrespective of what MikeB and others think, it will continue for the time being. It could also be a profitable enterprise.

On the other hand, evigon has been a disaster as I have not allowed any time. The original thinking was to provide e-invoicing (EIPP), supply chain finance and business advice services through edocr. And part of this was to monetise my blog. I almost made up my mind to stop talking about EIPP. Unfortunately (or fortunately), I just received two enquiries, one party is thinking about building an EIPP product, another is interested in leveraging my blog for publicity. In the past, I had many discussions with similar companies including Top 3 US based global bank, Top 3 spend management company, European EIPP providers, etc. In most cases, after many discussions, the projects did not proceed due to lack of available budgets or internal bureaucracy. So, the first thing I must establish now is:

• Is there a budget?
• Am I talking to the decision maker?

If not, however tempting the enquiry is, it’s a conversation that is not worth having. What do you think?

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Last year, I attended a number of sessions organised by Lee Strafford to learn and if possible engage with his project NetStart (previously called Project Sahara). Today, I learned that after much time investment in engaging with Regional Development Agencies, Universities, Developers and other like minded individuals, Lee has come to the conclusion, that no one is willing to look at the bigger picture of creating an ecosystem and radically change. Let’s take a step back. My understanding of Project Sahara was:

• Create an environment where multiple startups can thrive within an ecosystem.
• The ecosystem will include, entrepreneurs, investors, deal makers and service providers including mentors.
• There will be a fund set aside to invest in startups similar to Y-Combinator or Seedcamp
• NetStart will take a small shareholding as of the case with above two entities
• A web services platform will be developed to help startups overcome scalability and back-up issues.

I had a problem with above, as Lee’s strategy involved in changing the mindsets of RDAs, Universities, etc before working with startups. Too ambitious and cloudy in my mind. Lee also perhaps believed that having undergone the pain of starting up, growing and exiting, he understood the startup requirements. I cannot recall Lee ever asking what I need for edocr. Bit like Oracle saying how great they are without asking how Oracle can help edocr or anyone it is speaking to. This is something I discussed with StewartT from Sun Microsystems many times. SunM been an enterprising player, the programme was about selling to startups. Through dialogue Stewart changed his engagement to resolving problems startups have. By doing so, the community has accepted him and is engaging with SunM in a positive manner. edocr is no different to any other startup in the web 2.0 domain. So, if I am Lee, these would be the services that would make the most impact:

• Funding - provide seedcorn funding or work with the startup to secure seedcorn funding.
• Team - provide mentors, interim managers or staff to strengthen the senior team
• Product - provide a mechanism to validate and improve product
• Go-to-market strategy - help fine tune strategy as well as make vital first introductions

Last thing in my mind is a web services platform, which may relieve my back-office pains. If I can have expertise that help me generate revenues quicker and more, that would be where I would put my concentration. Yes, back-office functions are important, but startups can live with these problems until traction is achieved.

I also believe that Lee and other must have known that it is damn hard to change the RDAs and Universities. It would have been much easier to help number of startups achieve traction and then use them as case studies to lure RDAs and Universities. This is exactly what Lee hopes to do in the future. But I also felt from Day 1, this was all about building the web services platform. And guess what? This is exactly what Lee is working on! Do I need this platform? Perhaps not! Lee has telcos and other large players in mind as clients.

To conclude, NetStart is becoming a product company - quite a difference from the initial discussions. Lee has significant experience of taking a startup and building it to a UK brand. I wish Lee best wishes with NetStart, which is strangely enough another startup.

I hope above does not come out as criticism of Lee and NetStart. I like Lee and both of us love to see the region developing an ecosystem for digital startups. My contribution to this is through Northern StartUp 2.0, where incremental change is achieved. I have no vision of changing the region to become another Silicon Valley. All I am trying to do is get few people together once a month and allow them to talk to each other, so that great startups such as edocr can be born!

References:

• Project Sahara # 1 - Kick off meeting

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Apologies for taking so long to write about the fabulous webmission08 tour to San Francisco. Having completed, it feels like an event that occurred months ago. The premise of capturing a daily journal did not quite happen as planned except on Day 1, thanks to JimL, OliB and the team keeping all of us very active, day and night. People have asked me what I got out of the tour! Some were very critical of web mission as they thought it was waste of tax payers’ money. If you read the small print, each of us paid for our flight, accommodation and incidental expenses, and tax payers’ money was not part of the equation. More about this later. Others were curious to know and learn from my experience. Let’s first try to capture some of the action, and then perhaps you can make your own judgement about the value brought by such events:

Day 1 - 19th Saturday

Like most of the others, I joined web mission from London instead of taking a separate flight from Manchester to San Francisco. This allowed valuable networking time, especially with Ashley from Shiny Media and Edie from Spectator as we all sat next to each other. Stupidly, I mentioned web mission to US Immigration and they homed in on "mission", which meant that I was sent to secondary processing. Unfortunately undressing and a full body search was not part of the secondary processing. Few simple questions after, I managed to join the coach to Clift Hotel.

We arrived at around 3pm and after a quick shower StewartT and I head to a nearby Starbucks to meet none other than legendary blogger Om Malik. It just turned out that Om was putting final touches to a conference he plans to run in summer followed by an European Tour. We spoke about European Start Up scene, funding, edocr, etc (as you do!). His advice was: concentrate on European market.

Around 7:30 pm, the first of many parties started, held by TechCrunch at the Clift with Etelos, Inc. Etelos was represented by Jeff (CEO), Shel and Danny. Within 5 minutes of Jeff introducing his business proposition, Jeff and I shook hands to establish a partnership. Today, we are in the process of exchanging NDAs, with the hope of signing a Channel Partnership Agreement within weeks. Etelos will most likely become our first Channel Partner. I will write more about Etelos later on.

After more drinks thanks to Sun Microsystems, we continued networking till the early hours, which is crucial if you are on a trade mission such as this. All in a day’s work…

Another advice I got was from MikeB of TCUK: stop fxxxxxx about …events and get on with edocr. A valid point, but NS20 gives me a lever to leverage, which has already born fruit.

Day 2 - 20th Sunday

Day 2 started with youngsters (David of GroupSpaces, etc) participating in a local mini marathon, which I did not take part in. Then we took the coach to Jim Buckmaster’s house. Jim is a very tall guy and standing next to him, I felt even shorter than I was. Jim runs Craiglist, which is considered as a very successful web 1.0 business. Jim and his lovely companion Susan were kind enough to lay a fabulous brunch and drinks for us.

The Auctomatic guys who moved from Oxford to Silicon Valley two years ago to join Y-Combinator and having recently sold their business for several million dollars were there, as well as the family of Michael Birch, the founder of Bebo. Michael is in the process of selling his business to AOL for US$850 million, making him the most successful British Web 2.0 entrepreneur.  Michael’s brother Paul Birch also joined us as part of webmission08 with Paul Walsh from Segala. There was also a fringe group, which all together made the webmission08 participants to well over 50. Imagine 50 people networking together for a solid week, day and night. Such networking is bound to lead to great initiatives. Watch the press.

For some bizzare reason, we could not find a taxi, so Stewart, AndrewY and I ended up walking all the way to the Clift. With jet-lag kicking in and exhausted from the walk, I missed Brian Soli’s party (which was not part of the webmission08). Brian was a guy I wanted to meet, but perhaps on another time. Brian comes highly recommended by Yuuguu (AnishK) and ShareNow (DavidI). Brian also does PR for Docstoc (another player in document interactivity space). Strangely, Docstoc and its CEO, JasonN started following me on Twitter. Now they have access to my thought process. Jason announced recently of raising their second round of funding, a cool US$ 3.25 million.

Day 3 - 21st Monday

We took the coach to Oracle in the morning. Whilst various clever people spoke about the greatness of Oracle, two things continue to fill my mind, these being:

1. How can Oracle help me achieve our vision, e.g. generate revenues and profits? I call this sell-to and sell-through strategy (picked from BT).
2. How can Oracle help us differentiate and achieve sustainable competitive advantage? This is not simply saying how great Oracle database is.

Whilst listening to others, I started Twittering about my thoughts (as you do!). Few people picked my tweets including SAP and Oracle evangelists, which all together made interesting conversation. My Twitter followers started to increase, which is always a good sign. Later I learned from DavidR from Oracle who was part of webmission08 that they have noticed my thoughts. I met David last summer for the first time, and my first conversation with him went horribly wrong. I was hoping David would have forgotten it, but it was not meant to be. Talking about making lasting impressions! And in this case, it has made the wrong impression. Whatever I do, David will always measure me with his first impression. However, I noticed his attitude relaxing towards the end of the web mission, perhaps he was getting tired! Whether I will be able to do anything with David and Oracle, time will tell, as I believe time is a great heeler (not always though). David also felt that my continuing attachment to EIPP is causing confusion. Will talk about this later on.

Our next stop was Google. Having signed a NDA (supposed to be normal procedure), we were asked not to publicly speak about what was discussed. So I cannot talk about it other than say I did not learn any secrets. Two thoughts crossed my mind, but I refrained from speaking, one around edocr and the other to do with EIPP. Remember my Eureka moment on EIPP (Cracking the e-invoicing conundrum - finally!), which I blogged about before. If you are in the process of developing the next generation EIPP product, this is what I suggest you do with respect to Google.

Develop the product with Google and offer it free to smaller companies. Monetise it through ads by placing ads on the invoice and share the revenues with Google. This is the only way to dominate the market. You will never ever be able to achieve sufficient traction without a partner such as Google. Guys, please think outside the box. Having a great product along is not sufficient to achieve traction. If you want to know more about this, I could be hired on hourly rate through evigon Ltd (sorry no web site yet). Serious parties only, make sure you have a budget before engaging me. By the way, did anyone get a chance to read ebdex’s business plan, specification, etc through edocr yet?

You might be interested to know Oracle has its own internal social network, which has partially been opened. But Google claimed to be using mailing lists instead of social networks.

I also had a private meeting in Palo Alto with the luxury of traveling back by train. People say they are immune to the so called credit crunch (I certainly feel it, in permanent credit-crunch mode since starting ebdex in Nov 2004) due to San Francisco being a wealthy area. I bet they begin to feel it now with petrol prices rising up around the globe.

We took the coach in the afternoon to Second Chance Tuesday event sponsored by HSBC with fire side chat - Jim Buckmaster interviewing Michael Birch. It was perhaps the most comical yet serious interview I have ever witnessed. Michael turned the interview around and was having a laugh at Jim, vice versa. I assume Jim and Michael are good buddies. It was a great event. Came back to Clift followed by more drinks. We met June who used to present at Channel 4, but only realised this afterwards. Also met Peter Cashmore, CEO of Mashable. I have been complaining about lack of British startup coverage on Mashable. Pete promised to correct this (I am yet to see any results though). Pete and I hooked up through Facebook and Twitter.

This is getting too long, so I am going to split this into another blog post. Above is really meant as a reminder for me, hence going into lot of depth and including discussions perhaps you would not expect to read.  Will thank the organisers in the third post, and perhaps fourth post on outcomes for edocr (and me, if any!).

References:

• Webmission08 - Day 1: On flight to San Francisco
• San Francisco - here comes Manoj
• edocr getting ready for Webmission08 with Sun Microsystems and NTT Communications
• Webmission08 - edocr makes the final cut!

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This is written on flight but posted after landing as there isn’t a mechanism to post this any other way, eventhough my shiny new mac is picking up a "Free WiFi Signal". According to the list of attendees, I am accompanied by 19 exceptional individuals (so called entrepreneurs) and 27 supporters which include organisers to  media including Tom Watson, representing the UK Government. Some of them are already in the US (Stewart from Sun Microsystems, Jack Fairhall from Kwiqq, etc).

So here I am sitting next to two journalists, Ashley Noris, Founder of Shinymedia and Edie Lush of The Spectator magazine. We had a lot to speak as you do in long haul flights. Ashley is an entrepreneur who has raised venture capital funding for Shinymedia, and its a great pleasure to travel with a media startup. Whilst I cannot check his credentials and portfolio at present, I understand he has a similar product to gadgetspy run by Chris Haslam, who came on board to set-up edocr.

It was also good to catch up with Kristofer Mansson this morning, Founder of Silobreaker, whom I met at a large exhibition last year in London. We spoke about working together then and continued our discussion again today. Whilst we all have our own agendas, this mission also allows us to find ways of working with each other. And with that thought, I presented a challenge to Ashley: Write an article of how each company could work with each of the other 19 companies. Whilst we are of different sizes (some are post-funded whilst others are just thinking about it), collectively we can be larger than any one company. I am a great believer that we need to work at local level whilst nurturing global ambitions. Whilst I am at the start of the journey, I am almost thinking about the end, not just next Saturday, but in a years time and beyond. If statistics are to be believed, not all 20 companies may be live in 12 to 24 months time. But it would be great to look at the progress of the 20 companies in 12 months time, don’t you agree?

Here is the second challenge. Somebody need to take a profile of each of these 20 companies and then compare the progress each company has made in 12 months time. Who would rise to this challenge? Whilst all our profiles are on CrunchBase, a snap shot need to be taken. Would webmission08 be forgotten in 12 months time? Will there be a webmission09 next year? If so, who would represent the North next year? How would I like to see edocr in 12 months time? This is certainly a key date in edocr’s short life.

Ok. here are some targets for me to achieve by April 2009:

• Funded
• Full time team in place -
• edocr Version 3 launched (formally) - edocr has five stages: alpha, beta, launch, growth and dominate- funding will decide how quickly we can move from one stage to another.
• Revenues of GBP 75,000 (I know this is low - but remember we are web 2.0 - yes, I like to hit exponential curve in late 2009 as we enter launch and growth stages)
• Presence in Silicon Valley
• Brand equity - a well understood proposition. instant recognition.
• Traffic - not so worried - more interested in number of companies on board as customers (would edocr be hosting most of public-facing documents from HSBC? - at least lot more than we have today!)

If you are in San Francisco, I will be staying at the Clift Hotel till 25th morning. Do contact me if you are interested in:

• Building relationships with Northern UK technology startups (eveo Ltd)
• Want to know more about edocr (edocr Ltd)
• Want to know more about e-invoicing/EIPP/Supply Chain Finance in UK and Europe (evigon Ltd)
• Want to run an event in the North of England (eveo Ltd)
• Thinking about entering the UK market (evigon Ltd)

Just for clarity:

• edocr - YouTube/iTunes/Amazon/Google Search/Speed Dating for business pdfs
• eveo - one stop shop for event management (no website, but first brand is Northern StartUp 2.0)
• evigon - management consultancy and advisory services (no website yet - check this blog for competency and also my LinkedIn profile)

Lastly, this journey would have not been possible if it was not for:

• Sun Microsystems - the startups true friend (contact: Stewart Townsend)
• Daresbury Science and Innovation Campus- the only place for technology startups in the North (contact: Paul Treloar).

That will do for now! Catch you with the next post soon.

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edocr has been on CrunchBase run by TechCrunch since we first appeared on TechCrunch UK and US in October 2007. Here is a snap shot our profile. Do leave a comment if you happen to visit our page on CrunchBase.

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CrunchBase Information

edocr

edocr allows users to upload a .doc or .pdf document and then to download, share or embed it via a Flash interface on any website. No other forms of document are allowed. Learn More

Information provided by CrunchBase

TradeVibes goes beyond simply copying the information from your website, it provides interactivity, e.g. asking your feedback on bullishness or bearishness of the company. Here is the company profile:

http://www.edocr.com/

Edocr lets you upload your document and then allow people to download, share or embed it via a Flash interface on any website.

“edocr’s mission is to bring attention to business documents through…More»

Edocr lets you upload your document and then allow people to download, share or embed it via a Flash interface on any website.

“edocr’s mission is to bring attention to business documents through interactivity. At edocr, you can open a free account and upload your documents for sharing by the professional and business community. At the same time, you can interact with the documents uploaded by like minded professionals and businesses. Once uploaded, edocr generates a visually stunning thumbnail and flash document that you could embed on to your corporate website, blog, e-zine, etc. The social network wrapper around each flash document allows edocr community to interact with your documents through commenting, ranking, tagging, book marking, e-mailing friends and colleagues, e-mailing author/publisher without having to know their e-mail address, etc. The document can also be assigned to Special Interest Groups for extending the interactivity.”
(Source : http://www.edocr.com)«Less

edocr Company Profile

Powered by TradeVibes

Technorati Tags: TechCrunch, CrunchBase, edocr, TradeVibes

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I spent most of last Friday at the US Embassy and happy to report receipt of my passport back yesterday with a new shiny US Visa. I am looking forward to my first visit across the pond. To coincide with webmission08 readiness programme, I also ordered my first Apple computer today (Macbook Pro with 4GB memory). I am looking forward to been less frustrated with my computer from tomorrow onwards. Talking about firsts, today Smith&SmithPR issued our first press release to a selected number of journalists. You can find a copy below:

This is an old picture of the US Embassy in London I picked up from the Internet. If anyone has not applied for a US Business Visa before, but plans to from the UK, here is the process you will face:

1. Phone the Embassy and secure an interview and pay the fees. Premium rate call charges apply. There is no other way.
2. Fill on-line application plus supporting application if you are male.
3. Come 10 minutes before your appointment and join the queue. You cannot queue well in advance (silly me getting there over an hour before) - don’t forget to bring supporting documents - Your mobile can be left at security check-point, but please avoid bringing laptops and large bags
4. Get a number from the first desk and submit your application when called upon. Try not giving more information than asked on the web site. This will only lead to more checks (as perhaps was in my case).
5. After a while, you will be called upon for a very short interview.
6. Pay the secure delivery service for return of your passport. No you cannot collect it from the embassy.
7. If all above goes according to plan, you should receive your passport on due date with a shiny US visa stamp.

With respect to the US Visit, here are some of the edocr actions I need to progress before 18th:

1. Transfer all my data and applications to new mac (looking forward to this experience).
2. Complete business plan - quite a lot more work than I perceived - still at modelling stage
3. Fill remaining webmission08 free time slots - Looking forward to meeting Om Malik
4. Complete edocr Version 2 - the development started on the 7th April
5. Attend DrinkTank organised by Huddle boys - the last piss up before the flight
6. Get job profile done for edocr Community Manager - ideally find someone for this role

I also realised that I have not blogged recently about e-invoicing which need correcting.

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As part of our preparations for Webmission08, we have decided to migrate our back-end and the front-end to Sun Microsystems platform. We are a proud member of the Sun Microsystems’ StartUp Essential Programme and also a Sun Microsystems Advantage Partner. In fact, I have been evangelising the programme well before it was launched, working closely with Stewart Townsend, who manages the programme in the UK and Europe. The final details are yet to be worked out, but the hosting will be provided by NTT Communications. Both companies are fully supporting edocr’s virgin mission to San Francisco in April 08.

As part of the process, we first moved the back-end from North Wales to Ixis IT Offices at Daresbury Innovation Centre, at which point some of the team got bit carried away with celebrations, as you can see from following images. I must say, we are still looking for the front-end which is still somewhere in North Wales.

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This morning I shook hands with Nathan Smith, Managing Director of Smith & Smith PR, appointing them as PR Agency for promotion of edocr over the next 3 months. Smith & Smith PR will be responsible for PR within the European Union. As part of the discussions, they will also work closely with Northern StartUp 2.0. The actual details will be worked out over the next week or so.

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My brain was in an explosion this afternoon, whilst accompanying my family and a friend on a shopping trip to Ellesmere Port, off M56. This all started due to two conversations I had yesterday. I linked the two conversations with my experience of ebdex and edocr and devised a methodology for launching a new business for £25,000. For this to work, I need two ingredients:

1. The domain expertise must be present in-house. Ideally, the proposed startup CEO must have this expertise and must be passionate about it.
2. It must be easy for me to understand quickly and relate to a pain I have, so that I become the customer.

Then it is my task to quickly evaluate the possibility of its potential:

1. It must appeal to viral marketing
2. It must be suitable for a free and fee charging pro model
3. It must be simple to understand, if not, then find a way to simplify it
4. It must be suitable for web 2.0 treatment, if not, then find a way

Having done that, then quickly sketch out the proposition - real fag packet stuff, complete contradiction to MBA strategising. The next stage is to work out whether it will meet the following criteria:

1. Can the alpha product be developed for under £10,000? Alpha would be the product that will be offered free forever.
2. Can the beta product be developed for under £10,000? Beta would be the pro version offered at a no-brainer fee, allowing revenue generation.

Allocate further £5,000 for evangelising and administration. The £20,000 development budget does not allow all bells and whistles product, but a product that works and able to attract revenues. The bells and whistles can come second after concept is proven with Alpha and Beta. So the total cost to launch is £25,000.

As a new entity the business will have zero value, but taking future growth potentials into consideration, it is not unfair to assume a valuation of £100,000. This gives the investor a 25% stake of the business and possible role of Non Executive Director or Non Executive Chairman. The business must be able to generate significant value within 2 years to provide an exit for investor. What return the investor would get is anybody’s guess, but expects to be far higher than an average investment. Of course the whole thing could go flop which applies to any investment whether you invest into a startup of a FTSE100 company.

In this scenario, I see my role as Doer and never as the CEO. As the Doer, the role of COO is more appropriate with 9 to 12 months part-time role. I would also develop the product through my new company evigon, which in turn will manage resources from my ever growing Northern StartUp 2.0 community. Or yes, for this service, I would also demand 25% of the company. The CEO would be given 50% of the company, perhaps mixture of options and equity.

What is the downside to all this? Yes, the investor could loose £25,000. I will not be able to recover my investment (time and energy) through sale of 25% equity. The same could apply to the CEO.

Above is given for guidance only, as no two circumstances are the same. Could above be applied to e-invoicing/EIPP? Yeap! Don’t be silly, when OB10 spent $30 million, how could you launch for £25,000? Yes, it is possible. Of course, you should not compare like for like, but this can be done. If you are a developer, you can in fact do this with zero cost as you would be developing it. But what I stated here include paying for development time.

Anyone out there got multiple of £25,000 to test the model? Here is a real test for you - the cost of development and running of edocr to date, excluding time costs is less than £1000. This was achieved mainly due to in-house development capability. If the model described here was applied, it would certainly come within the £25,000.

In case you are wondering, there are others out there thinking the same. And all this work could be done in the UK without having to outsource to India, Russia or anywhere else.

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I am proud to announce that edocr has been chosen by webmission08 as one of the 20 most promising UK digital startups to visit San Francisco in April 08. I have known this for a while, but was not allowed to speak in public until TechCrunch broke the news. I see this as a win not just for the edocr team and its user base, but for the whole of the North West of England. We are proud to follow our fellow web 2.0 startup Yuuguu across the pond. Yuuguu achieved significant media coverage and growth since establishing connectivity with San Francisco.

Webmission08 is organised by entrepreneur Oli Barrett and Polecat and backed by UKTI, Heller Ehrmann, BT and HSBC. 20 companies were selected from over 100 applicants.

According to Mike Butcher, editor of TechCrunch UK:

Who judged all this? TechCrunch UK was asked to contribute thoughts on the applicants (TCUK is also the official media partner), as was well known tech entreprenuer, investor and former Dragon Doug Richard, along with UK Trade Invest, Oli Barrett and Polecat. We were all really impressed with the quality of the applications. In the words of Doug Richard “some of these companies are as good as anything coming out of the Valley”. And sponsors Heller Ehrmann are issuing a statement today saying: “The sheer volume of applicants provides convincing evidence of the depth and breadth of emerging growth technology companies in the UK. The shortlist of companies selected demonstrates that the UK is able to produce credible web businesses.”

What was the criteria? The judges were looking for companies who could do meaningful business in the US; from setting up office, to finding funding, to extending their network, and developing sustainable cross-pond relationships. They also assessed the companies based on their business viability and the strength of the management team. And they looked for a mix of companies that showed the breadth of what the UK has to offer in this space. The aim is for the companies “to explore new opportunities for growth with key people in Silicon Valley.”

Here is a list of the other 19 companies selected:

• Groupspaces [Oxford]- Web-based tools for groups
• Tioti [?] - A social network around TV
• Exabre (TheFilter) [Bath] - Advanced music recommendation
• Coull [Bristol] - Interactive video platform
• Zogix [Hertfordshire] - Employee services platform
• Byteplay (dotHomes) [?] - Real estate search engine
• Trampoline Systems [London] - Enterprise software harnessing social behaviour
• Hubdub [Edinburgh] - News prediction social network
• WAYN [?] - travel and lifestyle social networking community
• TrustedPlaces [?] - Venue recommendation network
• Slicethepie [?] - Enabling bands to raise money directly from their fans
• Mydeo [Wimbledon]- Mainstream application for storing and sharing video
• Skimbit [?] - Research and share decisions
• Huddle [?] - Enterprise 2.0 collaboration
• Rummble [?] - Mobile social networking and recommendation
• Zebtab [London] - Desktop TV application
• Silobreaker [London] - Contextual and graphic search results
• Kwiqq [Brighton] - Social Website builder
• ShortFuze [Cambridge] - Online movie creation tools for social networks

I have been discussing various ways to collaborate with some of the above companies. Some of these companies have raised funding and are generating revenues. edocr may well be one of the youngest and least funded companies. If you attended my discussions at BarcampManchester and Start Up Camp London, you know how much it cost us to develop edocr.

Raj Anand’s “Blogging for Business” white paper is extremely popular with edocr community. I plan to setup a Special Interest Group within edocr to help collate documents on webmission.

I have secured sponsorship from Daresbury Science and Innovation Campus (where edocr is based) to offset some of our costs and currently looking for two other sponsors. If you are interested, please do get in touch sooner than later.

Technorati Tags: edocr, webmission08

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Billentis, a company run by highly-respected ExPP evangelist Bruno Koch, is the latest service provider operating in the e-invoicing market to join edocr, your favourite business document interactivity portal. The document below gives an overview of the European e-invoicing and e-billing market:

Following document highlights successful e-invoicing network models:

What’s stopping you taking advantage of edocr free of charge today?  Some of the other’s taking advantage of edocr includes:

• Accountis
• Ariba
• CashTech (part of FundTech and sister company of Accountis)
• Causeway Technologies
• Crossgate Group
• United Data

Technorati Tags: edocr, Billentis, Bruno Koch, e-billing, e-invoicing, EIPP, EBPP, ExPP

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edocr plans to attend the StartUp Camp on 7th and 8th March sponsored by Sun Microsystems, and co-hosted by:

This is our first time at a StartUp Camp. According to event organisers:

“Startup Camp is an unconference which means you get to decide what the session content is. If you’re thinking of coming to Startup Camp London and want to suggest some discussion topics, you’re welcome to list them on a special page that we’ve set aside on the wiki for such discussion proposals”

So far, over 130 individuals have registered for the event. Some of these include Northerners:

• Katie Lips, Treasuremytext, Launched Startup, blog
• Guy Dickinson, Pre-Launch Startup, blog
• Paul Robinson, Vagueware Ltd, Technology Provider, blog

Having spend over 3 yrs in the digital startup segment, I am hoping that I would get a time slot to share my experience and learn from others. I expect to cover the following areas:

• Soft launching a digital startup under £1000 cash investment
• Document interactivity portal – 3 applications from Knowledge Exchange, Marketing Communications Channel for Lead Generation, Event Collaboration
• Learning from catastrophic stupidity
• Not putting all eggs in the same basket
• Is success guaranteed this time? Hell, yes!

As a media partner, edocr has also provided a special interest group (SIG) to capture the conversation through documents (slide packs, press releases, product info, white papers, case studies, etc) and forum. This is a pilot we are running with Sun Microsystems to demonstrate the benefit edocr could bring to event organisers.

If you are an event organiser, why not get in touch to explore how you could add value to your event and differentiate from the crowd?

Technorati Tags: StartUp Camp, edocr, Vagueware, Treasuremytext, thinkfold, google, sun microsystems

Popularity: 7% [?]

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Keeping true to my promise, I started a regular e-mail marketing campaign for edocr last Friday. I am yet to start a similar initiative for ebdex. Unfortunately, the SaaS product I used to produce the ezine does not allow me to create an effective pdf for uploading to edocr. I am yet to figure out how to keep a public record of ezines produced for edocr, ebdex and Northern StartUp 2.0.

Reaction to eZine

In the ezine, I identified four case studies, among them was Crossgate, which has achieved significant success on Google rankings due to uploading a single document on e-invoicing to edocr. Having read the ezine, Crossgate responded positively and immediately by uploading a number of other documents related to e-invoicing to capitalise from its prominent position on Google.

Among the recipients of the ezine were US based Ariba; UK based Accountis, United Data and Causeway Technologies; and India based CashTech (a subsidiary of FundTech of US). CashTech responded by setting up a special interest group. Now they need to attract members to the group to kick start and maintain the conversation. Here are the latest documents up loaded by Crossgate:

It is unfair to expect the same level of response from each of the recipients of the ezine. We are all bombarded by ezines and e-mails everyday. You need to strategically and/or tactically decide which ones to follow up and which ones to bin.

Tagging

Assuming that edocr falls into the “follow up” or “action immediately” category, it is vital you grasp the basics of using edocr to maximise its impact on the websphere. Part of this is tagging. If you do not tag properly, the chances of finding your document by others will be minimised. Always follow the below guidelines (each document with at least 3 tags):

• Your company and other relevant company names mentioned in the document
• Type of document, e.g. press release, white paper, case study, product leaflet
• Subject matter, e.g. e-invoicing, EIPP, SCF, spend management, business continuity

If you are uploading a document on e-invoicing (or another subject), find out the tags used by others on similar documents (e.g. accounts payable automation, finance automation). Avoid adding none relevant tags as this will bring less credibility to your documents over time.

Popularity: 6% [?]

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Just now, I googled “e-invoicing”. Below are the results:

Crossgate is at 10th place and this blog is at 9th place. What does this tell you? Crossgate has taken advantage of edocr to have a listing on Google first page for much contended keyword without paying a penny. How much has Microgen, AuthentiDate, Bottomline, Xerox, paypal, gandlake, accountis, AcuInvoice and Insearchofsolutions have paid Google to be on the first page? How much has OB10 and accountis have paid for Search Engine Optimisation? How much has Crossgate paid? Perhaps not a penny. 

So what has Crossgate done to achieve this level of success. They simply uploaded a document to edocr and tagged it appropriately. Here is the visually high impact thumbnail:

What should Crossgate do now?

In order to achieve this level of success, Crossgate needs to continually upload their documents to edocr. Otherwise sustainability of this position will be short lived. We are also receiving significant amount of traffic for keywords e-invoicing and EIPP as well as for other subjects (cannot ignore the cheat sheets!). 

What can you do to achieve the same success?

So if you wish to achieve similar success why not start uploading documents to edocr today? Its free. If you feel it’s too much, why not outsource the uploading, describing and tagging to ebdex (or another service provider), as ebdex is happy to charge for performing this service. 

I assume that you now understand the power of edocr (if not please do tell! I am more than happy to explain). Once you have entered edocr, how do you ensure that your company receives the maximum attention? This is easy. On Home Page, there are two locations where you can have your documents displayed for a small fee plus to advertise on edocr.

Conditions: Days must be used within a month of clearing the funds. You are free to choose the days (based on availability) but must include a Saturday and Sunday. Prices are valid for 1 week from today. Please contact me through manoj@ranaweera.name if you prefer a different service to what is advised above. Please note that edocr reserve the right to change pricing any time.

It’s a market place

Our objective is to earn an income from above services every day. We also believe in the RyanAir and EasyJet model, i.e. all day slots must be filled. We are able to adjust above pricing to suit demand. Do you need any more incentive to take advantage above your competition? 

Popularity: 16% [?]

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Without a doubt, Bruno is the master of e-invoicing in Europe if not the world. His e-invoicing Quarterly is a much anticipated update of the e-invoicing market. Whilst I have hoped to do something similar for the UK market, I must admit, I am less organised than Bruno. However, I plan to put my e-mail marketing solution from iContact into full swing this year. If you are interested in e-invoicing and have not subscribed to Bruno’s e-invoicing Quarterly, I suggest you do that right away. Here is a review of what Bruno has written.

1. European Market Outlook 2008

The e-invoicing market continues to remain fragmented and small but with potential to be a significant market. Unfortunately, not much has changed since the early 2000’s except for the increasing number of vendors entering the market place, as reported by Bruno. This is obviously a positive side of a maturing market and has led to minor improvements in the overall market share. However, the optimistic predictions of analysts continued to be missed, year after year. We are still addressing the fundamental problem of replacing paper based solutions with electronic systems. We also seems to have forgotten that our key competitor is none other than paper.

Whilst much has been spoken of supply chain finance and the second p (payment) of EIPP, none of these solutions are going to achieve traction until the fundamental problems are sorted out including the significant barriers faced in implementations. This is not to say that the best-in-class companies, as regularly reported by Aberdeen Group, are not enjoying the benefits of e-invoicing. All I am highlighting is that current deployments are a drop in the ocean, when compared to the potential market size, and significant drive from vendors, consultants and governments are needed if this market segment is to be taken seriously. Lack of profits within the service provider organisations continues to dampen the spirit of the enthusiasm.

Niche players such as OB10 has worked tirelessly to promote e-invoicing globally whilst companies such as Ariba has entered the market as part of its product diversification strategy. The scanning and OCR providers, EDI houses and accounts payable specialists all admit that EIPP is the way forward. Many of these companies I have spoken to remain convinced that EIPP is yet to arrive. I do not think they are been ignorant. If a company does not change to satisfy changing market conditions, the survival of the company will be short lived. Their stand is simply based on customer requirements, i.e. none of their customers are asking for EIPP or e-invoicing. So something is missing from the market place. I put this simply down to lack of awareness which can only be addressed by EDUCATION EDUCATION EDUCATION.

Lately, many financial organisations have taken a vested interest in purchase-to-payment or e-invoicing document exchange. Most of the global leading banks are either offering services through partners or currently in discussion with partners to offer these services. At the same time, there are commercial lending organisations such as invoice discounters and factors taking an interest in the segment. This has also created an environment where traditional vendors for the financial sector is taking a closer look at EIPP, e.g. FundTech. Forrester has claimed this is the year for consolidation. No doubt there will be one or two major transactions, but it is more likely 2009 will be the year for consolidation.

What all of above means is that the e-invoicing or EIPP market should start to make progress this year. More work is needed to encourage service providers to collaborate with each other. I would like to see much more activity at Hub Alliance and other initiatives this year. The problem with Hub Alliance is that there is no budget to drive the “alliance” forward. In addition, the members’ aspirations are limited by their own personal needs, rather than offering a “alliance” for everyone interested in e-invoicing. Whilst I remain pessimistic about the market segment, I am hoping that I will be proven wrong this year.

2. European ExPP Summit

Many thanks to Bruno for organising an exceptional event. Also thanks for the X’mas present, which shows what a gentleman Bruno is! I look forward to participating in this years event. However, my personal feelings for the last year’s event was that it missed a trick. As I continue to say EDUCATION EDUCATION EDUCATION, I felt that the last year’s event was very much organised for the vendor community and not for the potential users. I cannot remember meeting a single person who was looking to purchase a solution. This is also down to the marketing of the event. As an admirer of Bruno, My blog is freely available for any promotion activities of ExPP. This year I can also offer edocr free of charge. A real possibility exists where all ExPP documentation could be hosted by edocr including special interest groups for discussion of various topics prior to and after the event, so that this year’s event become a collaborative event instead of a traditional event. Anyone else got any more bright ideas?

3. Accelya

Thanks for the story Bruno. I must admit, ADP Clearing was not a company I tracked before. As I understood from the story, Chequers Capital has acquired ADP Clearing and has renamed the company as Accelya.  Accelya specialises in invoices, travel reservations, airline tickets, payment instructions and credit card collections, and consider themselves as a leading Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) service. This classification put them immediately in competition with large BPO providers and less in competition with niche players such as OB10. With annual revenues of $70 million and over 8 million e-invoicing transactions, further review is necessary to understand their business model and product offering. Level of e-invoicing transactions seems to be low compared to the revenues, suggesting deployment of a less optimum model than the niche players. The web site has a modern feel but significantly lack in information to undertake a quick review. Looks like they have not found out about edocr yet.

4. Partnership between Basware and Crossgate

Ah! This is a story I knew about and planned to cover, but never got the chance. Crossgate is a user of edocr, but Basware has not yet taken the advantage of edocr. Would you believe, I am yet to do an e-mail marketing campaign on edocr to e-invoicing (EIPP) service providers or to anyone else for that matter. All documents related to e-invoicing on edocr can be found from here. I am not going to cover the story now, other than to say that the inter-operator connection allows over 74,000 companies to be reached.

What is uncertain from this press release is that whether this number takes into consideration of companies connected to Burns e-Commerce, Causeway’s Tradex, Asite, Certipost and Laison, who are all members of the hub alliance. Whilst I was providing advisory services to Causeway Technologies in 2007, one of the channel partners I introduced was looking to achieve the same result. Under current arrangements, this company do not qualify to be a Hub Alliance member, as they do not operate a hub.

But if discussions are successful and if they became a partner of Causeway’s Tradex, then they could indirectly exchange purchase-to-payment documents electronically with companies that are connected with any of the