E-Invoicing Support from a Global Partner: How Mandate Delays Are an Opportunity for Your Company

The introduction of e-invoicing mandates in various countries – most recently in France and Poland – poses new challenges for multinational companies. The complexity of the specific country requirements and the regular changes to implementation deadlines and regulations require a strategic approach to e-invoicing if you don’t want to end up with a patchwork of reactive, individual local solutions that will become all the more difficult to manage in the long term. Find out how you can use the delays in these mandates to your strategic advantage.

Mandate delays give you time to reevaluate your e-invoicing strategy

The multiple – and hopefully final – significant delays in the e-invoicing mandates for France and Poland in 2023 and 2024 offer companies the opportunity to strategically rethink their e-invoicing approach and make it fit for purpose. Instead of essentially firefighting and reactively introducing quick amendments, companies can use this time to implement a proactive, strategic and scalable solution that meets global requirements – long term.

What are the advantages of bringing a global partner on board for e-invoicing?

A global e-invoicing partner can support multinational companies with extensive expertise and innovative solutions that offer the following strategic benefits:

1. Stay compliant and reduce risk by using a global e-invoicing partner

	Legal certainty: Support in complying with all the country-specific e-invoicing requirements, including format specifications, authentication, archiving and signature procedures by a global partner. This lets you implement a range of completely different country requirements in a standardized, uniform way.
	Keep on track of mandates: Continuous monitoring of new and changed e-invoicing mandates in all relevant countries, complete with proactive process adaptation. When trying to keep track of current and upcoming e-invoicing mandates, information is often only available in the national language. Official translations, if offered at all, usually lag weeks or even months behind. It’s worth searching out a partner who can support you in consolidating all of this into a standardized approach.
	Reduce risk: Reduce the risk of fines and penalties for non-compliance with country-specific e-invoicing requirements. Some countries have quite draconian penalties for not adhering to e-invoicing requirements. Don’t get caught out. Instead, find a partner who can validate your invoices before they are sent and give you immediate feedback from the relevant national e-invoicing platform on processing progress.
	Benefit from validation and certification services: Get invoice content validated against syntax, semantics and business rules to check they are compliant, before sending or upon receipt.

2. Streamline processes and save money by using a global e-invoicing partner

	Increase efficiency: Automate e-invoicing processes, increase processing cycles and reduce the need for human intervention. Advantages for accounts payable: Raise invoices and convert them to various e-invoicing formats Automatic electronic dispatch Track delivery Electronic archiving Advantages for accounts receivable: Automatically received by business partners, providers and platforms Automated validation and conversion of various e-invoicing formats into a format readable by the ERP system. Automated transfer to ERP system for further processing, posting in ledger and payment.
	Scalability: The solution can be scaled to meet a customer’s individual needs and global transaction volumes, whether low or extremely high. At sales peaks such as on Black Friday, during the Christmas period or at the end of a financial quarter, our customers need scalability, continued stability and security, even as they are turning over many times their normal revenues.
	Cost savings: Reduce operating costs through automation, streamlining the supply chain and cutting out human error. Cost savings tend to be even higher for customers than suppliers as processing incoming invoices often involves a higher level of manual intervention. Then, as automated processing is quicker, customers can also take advantage of prompt payment discounts.
	Transparency: Track the progress of your e-invoice in real time and call up detailed reports on processing. A modern e-invoicing solution comes with dashboards and advanced search capabilities to let you see the progress of your pending e-invoices in real time. If there is a query on an invoice or you need to perform some error analysis, you can call up invoice details such as processing status, ERP format, signature or archiving status, as well as pulling up the original invoice or visualizing it as a pdf.

3. Increase technical expertise and innovation by using a global e-invoicing partner

	Platform agnostic: Connects to all major ERP and accounting systems and integrates seamlessly into the company’s IT landscape, regardless of the platform used. Many customers cannot predict with certainty how their ERP landscape or interfaces and formats are likely to change. The business may be affected by a merger or a spin off, while the ERP provider may change their offering, such as from SAP ECC to SAP S/4HANA. This is where an ERP-agnostic e-invoicing solution offers investment security and flexibility – even if just for a technology change from SAP IDoc via tRFC to the ODATA protocol (REST API) or switching from on-prem in-house operations to the cloud.
	Future proof: Continuous development of the e-invoicing solution to meet current and future technical requirements, including new e-invoicing standards and formats. Ideally, the e-invoicing solution will be based on a low-code platform with a wide range of integration functions, connectors and industry-specific solutions.
	Innovation potential: Access to innovative e-invoicing functions and services, such as data analysis, process automation, artificial intelligence for mapping and testing, auto-alerts for certain statuses. These increase efficiency and effectiveness.

4. Extend global reach and intercultural competencies by using a global e-invoicing partner

Local support on the ground: Nothing beats local support. Look for a global network of offices with experts who can combine local know-how with global expertise and support companies active in different countries. Intercultural competencies, sensitive handling of different business cultures and customs in an international context to ensure smooth cooperation and communication will all significantly contribute to the success of your project.

Multilingual support: Look for comprehensive support in several languages to optimally serve a global workforce and business partners worldwide. Overcome language barriers while benefitting from service times and service levels that best suit your specific needs.

5. Leverage further advantages by using a global e-invoicing partner

	Advanced document processing: Process and integrate other digital documents, such as orders, shipping notifications and credit notes. This means that the entire business process can be optimized with electronically structured business documents using standards such as EDIFACT or Peppol.
	Improved collaboration with business partners: Simplify and streamline the exchange of e-invoices and other documents with business partners worldwide.
	Enhanced sustainability credentials: E-invoicing reduces paper use, helping protect our natural resources and environment.

Strategic advantages of choosing SEEBURGER as a global e-invoicing partner for multinational companies

Given the complex and dynamic e-invoicing landscape, working with a global e-invoicing partner like SEEBURGER gives multinational companies a number of strategic benefits that go far beyond simply meeting compliance requirements:

• Extensive expertise: Access extensive knowledge about country-specific e-invoicing requirements in compact formats such as our numerous webcasts and blog articles, and enjoy comprehensive implementation support to ensure ongoing compliance.
• Proactive alignment: Continuous monitoring of the existence of new or modified e-invoicing mandates coupled with proactive process amendments ensures continued compliance.
• Automated processes: Automated e-invoicing processes improve efficiency, reduce errors and shorten processing times.
• Scalable solution: The solution can be scaled to a company’s individual needs and their global transaction volume.
• Transparent cost structure: The cost structure is transparent and easy to anticipate.
• Platform agnostic: Connect to your existing ERP and accounting software, it integrates seamlessly with your IT landscape.
• Certified solutions: SEEBURGER has been repeatedly awarded various certification, including ISO 27001, TISAX, ISAE 3402 and more than 50 individual certifications for SAP ECC and S/4HANA.
• Future-oriented technology: Continuous further development ensures that the solutions are well placed to meet future technical requirements as well as current needs.
• High availability and data security: The high availability of the e-invoicing platform and the security of sensitive data is constantly assured.
• Future-proof architecture: The scalable and flexible architecture can be adapted to meet any future requirements or new e-invoicing standards.

Why partner with SEEBURGER for your global e-invoicing needs?

• Many years’ experience in providing e-invoicing solutions for multinational companies in a variety of industries.
• Comprehensive solution portfolio that as well as e-invoicing also caters for other document types and integration tasks in the business-to-business sector.
• Global presence: Global network of partners and subsidiaries to support companies worldwide.
• Customer-oriented approach – Customer satisfaction is a top priority at SEEBURGER and this is promoted through the sound support and expert consulting we give our customers.

Source: https://blog.seeburger.com/e-invoicing-support-from-a-global-partner-how-mandate-delays-are-an-opportunity-for-your-company/