Step 1: Understand your 'as-is' procedure:
When I was selling e-invoicing, I knew that if a prospect didn't know their 'as-is' process, they were at least a year away from deploying e-invoicing. So don't skip the first step.
If you don't understand your process, you're unlikely to understand critical data such as your First Time Match Rate. As a result, you won't know how much e-invoicing can aid you (and you may have problems in your process which need other solutions, as well).
You're also unlikely to know the full cost of your invoicing process, so you won't be able to put together a convincing business case.
You will learn the following by mapping out your 'as is' process:
Why do invoices go wrong?
How e-invoicing can help you solve process flow issues
If you go with e-invoicing, how many invoices will be "in scope"?
What your 'as-is' cost is, and how much it will drop if you switch to electronic billing.
How long does it now take to process an invoice, and how much time will e-invoicing save?
How can you improve your chances of getting negotiated reductions by lowering the number of days?
Step One will take 3 to 6 months, but you'll be clearer and more realistic when you make your business case at the conclusion.
Knowing your cost-per-transaction is critical for effective bargaining with the provider with whom you end up signing.
Step 2: Understand the company's vision:
When process change is placed in the context of the company's overall goals, it makes sense to stakeholders.
This means it's important to take the time to figure out where the firm wants to go in six, twelve or twenty-four months, and then extrapolate how e-invoicing may help the organisation achieve that goal. Take some time to look beyond the 'day to day and see where the firm is going. (Ask a lot of questions and listen carefully to the replies.) After that, you can:
Understand and articulate e-broader invoicing's purpose, and position e-invoicing as a critical enabler for achieving objectives.
To present e-invoicing back to senior management, use their terminology.
Elevate e-invoicing to the top of the priority list.
This venture necessitates preparation and time away from your day job, but it will pay off in the long run when your CFO, CPO, and CTO (Chief Treasury Officer) regard e-invoicing as their single point of failure.
Step three: Bring procurement on board as soon as possible.
This is easier in a company where Finance and Procurement are already connected, have shared reporting lines and objectives, and work as a single team.
However, in businesses where this 'joined-upness' does not exist, it is normal for Finance to take ownership of a project because they benefit more immediately, while Procurement is almost an afterthought. This has the potential to kill the project right there and then.
This is partly due to the fact that e-invoicing is a supplier-focused programme, and while Finance, or rather Accounts Payable, pays suppliers, Procurement owns them. This means that when it comes to the e-invoicing initiative, suppliers will first listen to Procurement and then to Finance. So, if procurement isn't brought in or is dismissive of e-invoicing in any way, your suppliers will sense this and be hesitant to sign up.
This is likely the most important aspect of getting e-invoicing right, and it's so often neglected as a minor point. It's not the case. It has the potential to make or break your endeavour.
Consider the following when working with Procurement:
Why are we doing e-invoicing, drivers?
Is the scope broad enough to include all suppliers, invoice kinds, AP transaction types, and countries?
Is the scope of the solution limited to e-invoicing or does it include an end-to-end solution?
Is it necessary to send a message or is it optional?
Will the communications 'fall on the right desk' because of the database's quality?
What level of seniority will the signatories have? What's the difference between the CPO and the CFO? (In an ideal world, certainly.)
Finance and Procurement KPIs – are they on the same page?
Who will reply to the vendors who refuse to cooperate?
Who will be in charge of the project? Is it possible to combine Finance and Procurement?
Investing time early on in finding out a Procurement relationship is critical to a project's success.
Step 4: Assign a name to the project.
The nameless initiatives are likely to remain in project status for a long period, seldom moving to operational or 'go live' status. This isn't an accident.
By naming your e-invoicing project both before and after the contract, you'll be able to:
Give it a name that will help people understand it.
Create curiosity ('What is this Globe project everyone is talking about?') and interest.
Because you're all talking about the same thing, avoid any confusion.
Increase involvement and emotional attachment, especially if you avoid the obvious names like Globe, Probe, and e-Procurement Project - all good names, but how about something more interesting, like movie or fiction character names? Or holding a contest (with a great prize) to see who can come up with the most imaginative name?
Step No. 5: Know what you're looking for before you go shopping.
What exactly are you looking for? Is it a top-of-the-line e-invoicing system? Is it dynamic discounting with e-invoicing? Is it an e-invoicing system with workflow and routing, or an e-procurement system for your upstream procurement? Because you're pushing it out across several nations, do you need it to be VAT compliant and language-sensitive? Do you need to take advantage of their onboarding services? (This is usually a good idea.)
It's crucial to know what you want and then write down your criteria in a paper.
You'll get the following:
Business and commercial requirements
Process specifications
Requirements for the scope (impacting the legal treatment and the languages supported)
IT requisites (but these are probably weighted lightly, as all e-invoicing solutions I know of are system agnostic)
Requirements in terms of resources and/or timing
Then, to make sure you're not comparing one solution type to another completely different solution type in order to make a decision, make sure the companies you invite to reply to the RFP all offer similar-ish services.
step 6: Calculate the cost of postponing implementation.
Having a daily, weekly, monthly, and annual figure for the cost of doing nothing - 'going as is' - will help drive a deadline.
It's best to create this amount with the primary stakeholders so that everyone agrees on it and understands that delaying the project by a month costs the organisation X.
Having a daily figure will assist in keeping the project on track.
Step 7: Adhere to the provider's best practices.
The company you choose will most likely have implemented 20 to 100 e-invoicing programmes (if it is one of the bigger providers like Tungsten, Ariba, Taulia or Tradeshift). This means you'll be able to benefit from their now-structured and documented experience.
Some providers are so confident in their best practices that they offer a guarantee on invoice conversion.
"Clean your supplier data, or let us clean it," "have procurement sign off on the communication," and "be available and ready to reply when certain suppliers declare they won't comply with the request" are examples of best practices.
Our e-invoicing content is centralised in the share space e-invoicing hub. The full e-invoicing journey is covered in a variety of content, including webinars, articles, and survey studies, from planning and rollout to benchmarking and ongoing improvement.
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