Each year brings more dramatic developments in global e-invoicing compliance to which manufacturers must quickly respond. There are more than 170 governments worldwide now operating a value added tax (VAT) or goods and services tax (GST) scheme – and more to come in the next months and years[1]. Recent research from IDG [CG1] shows that manufacturers are responding to this changing environment through trusted third-party partners.
The IDG research suggests that manufacturers have been taken aback slightly by the complexity of creating a compliant global e-invoicing regime. Central to this is the role played by changing mandates, regulations and legislation.
Global e-invoicing regulation begins to bite
It’s clear from the research that mitigating the risk from global e-invoicing compliance failure is much more than a theoretical driver. Nearly one quarter of manufacturing companies told IDG that their business had been negatively affected by compliance failures in the previous 12 months. In fact, 55% of manufacturers expect their company to be affected by new or changing e-Invoicing regaulations over the next 12 months.
A complex picture continues to become more complex
Today almost every country and region interprets e-invoicing in a slightly different way and stipulates different formats and standards – technical, industry and regulatory – including:
- Technical standards such as ANSI, UN/EDIFACT, XML, ebXML, OASIS UBL 2 and PDF/A-3
- Industry standards such as GS1 in retail, ETIS in Telecoms, RosettaNet in High- Tech and ISO 20022 in Finance
- Regional/country standards such as PEPPOL in the EU and parts of the Asia Pacific region, FatturaPA in Italy, FacturaE in Spain, UBL-TR in Turkey, Comprobante Electronico in Ecuador and the NFe, NFS-e and CT-e formats in Brazil
Maintaining compliance with tax authorities globally requires an e-invoicing solution that monitors changes and applies new regulations and archiving requirements proactively to keep manufacturers compliant in any country.
Companies are beginning to understand that the complexity can put an extraordinary burden on internal resources and are looking for support from external partners.
Selecting a single global e-invoicing provider
When asked by IDG, 90% of manufacturers said that it would be valuable to have a single global partner for their e-invoicing needs. Companies had a long list of capabilities they expected from this partner. Key skills that a provider should possess are integration and onboarding expertise (91%) but this has to be delivered on a in cloud-based environment (78%) that allows the organization to leverage the latest technologies (74%).
The manufacturers surveyed felt that the provider they worked with should be able to help overcome global e-Invocing compliance issues by offerring contracts that ensure all relevant regaultory requirements will be met (86%) – something best delivered by a global e-Invocing platform that connects organizations with suppliers, partners and government bodies to securely exchange a wide range of compliant business documents.
In all, 77% of manufacturers felt it was important to be able to plug into an existing global scalable platform. The best e-invoicing providers deliver a unified, cloud-based enterprise platform – such as OpenText™ Trading Grid – with embedded e-Invoicing capabilities that can immediately connect manufacturers to an existing global community of customers, suppliers and even regulators with tried and tested integrations.
The results of this IDG survey strongly suggest that, as government mandates and industry regulations grow, manufacturers seem more prepared to look to external service providers to fill the gaps in skills and resource they need.
Learn more about a compliant e-invoicing solution from OpenText™ that provides companies with a single, global enterprise e-invoicing platform to facilitate trading with its community of partners and suppliers worldwide.
