The Need for a Single Global E-invoicing Provider: SPS Commerce!

by | Aug 14, 2024 | E-invoicing

Finding an e-invoicing supplier is a complex choice for a company, especially when it is dealing in an international environment. We broke down numbers from a study conducted by Billentis to demonstrate the importance of having a seamless solution to deal with you e-invoices.

The Billentis Study

Analysts at Billentis stated that multinational companies are leveraging, on average, between three and 20 service providers dealing with their inbound electronic invoices, and between 20 and 160 service providers for outbound electronic invoicing and electronic reporting.

While the potential cost savings and gains in process efficiency from digitizing and automating seem clear, resistance to adoption remains. According to survey results, the most cited challenges were technical concerns, including data security (54%), integration of internal systems (45%), cost of implementation (39%) and overall complexity of technology (39%). This confirms that e-Invoicing is an integration challenge, one that is best addressed at the “edge” of your business, where you connect your internal applications to your external partners.

The internal shifting landscape of siloed applications, combined with external pressures from different regional mandates, creates genuine concerns for businesses. It’s no surprise that research shows 84 percent of companies would find it valuable to have a single global partner to overcome e-Invoicing challenges. Companies had a long list of capabilities they expected from this partner, such as integration and onboarding expertise, delivered in a cloud-based environment which has built-in data security and offering contractual assurances of compliance.

Countless Solutions

According to Billentis, the number of vendors acting as electronic invoicing service providers is now approaching 2,000 globally. The solutions offered by these vendors fall into different high-level categories, such as enterprise software (on-premises), services/SaaS/cloud solutions, or niche applications, which are typically complementary to broader solutions but provide limited scope. ERP vendors, supply chain automation suites, selling and fulfillment (sales order management), P2P suites/e-Procurement (Sourcing/Spend), accounts payable, accounts receivable, document capture/automation (OCR), tax compliance, supply chain finance, payments/financial services, and BPO (business process outsourcing) …the list goes on.

All of these solution classes only offer a partial solution to the many and varied e-Invoicing challenges. While the focus of these solutions is different, when it comes to the electronic invoice process, they all provide similar functionality. Unfortunately, they effectively duplicate cost and add complexity in terms of technical deployment, support, compliance maintenance and archive for tax audit purposes.

Why SPS Commerce is the right choice

As the market leader in B2B integration globally, SPS Commerce is uniquely positioned to solve the e-Invoicing problem. SPS Commerce offers scalability and flexibility to clients, with a range of solutions for small businesses up to the largest enterprises. The e-Invoicing solution is delivered as a unified, cloud-based enterprise platform, SPS Commerce has active Invoices with Compliance, which embeds e-Invoicing capabilities into the B2B platform. This platform can immediately connect companies to an existing global community of customers, suppliers and other supply chain partners with tried and tested integrations. Companies can switch from unsecured and risky email/PDF-based invoice processes to fully automated e-Invoicing. This meets data security requirements while enabling closer collaboration with supply chain partners.

In addition to invoices, SPS Commerce platform enables businesses to also exchange their related business documents over the platform to meet industry standards and comply with local regulations and government mandates. The platform accommodates any document format, technology standard or communication protocol to be able to automatically deliver outbound receivables e-Invoices as well as supporting inbound accounts payable flows.

Built in analytics services can ensure that e-Invoicing plays an integrated role in the improvement of finance and supply chain processes. It reduces the costs and risks associated with manual invoice processes and siloed point solutions while enhancing cashflow through reduction of days sales outstanding. Late payment penalties are reduced, and companies gain increased access to early payment discounts, so a global electronic invoicing platform such as SPS Commerce delivers a rapid return on investment that pays for itself.

Designed with the needs of global multinationals in mind, Active Invoices with Compliance provides companies with a single, global enterprise e-Invoicing platform backed by expert services to facilitate trading with a community of partners and suppliers worldwide.

Nathan Trouwloon
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