The migration from the old habit of de-electronizing invoices by printing them on paper - and thereby loosing much of the valuable information - and causing a lot of cost for re-electronizing what is left of it - is gathering speed in many ways. Some examples:
- invoice receivers both nationally and multinationally are setting deadlines for paper or unstructered PDFs (really important to get all-to-all concepts and standards in place fast - to avoid fragmentation)
- invoice senders are charging ..
Palkka.fi proudly presents a new feature starting April 2009:
A business using Palkka.fi can now save the salary files as a CSV-file instead of printing them out as paper files. The CSV-file can then be sent to the bookkeeper electronically. Up until now the files had to be printed out to be mailed to the bookeeping - where they had to be either typed or scanned into the accounting system.
Thus the new feature builds up considerable savings both in time and delivery expenses for both parties. I..
The real-time web application could be used as a tool in decision-making. While considering different options or business transactions, an entrepreneur could "try out" different outcomes in the financial statement in advance, before actually committing any one of them. This could be useful at least for a starting entrepreneur and for long term investments. And, of course, mobile user interface would free the user of time and space. I pictured the use of Palkka.fi while imagining the trying out..
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has decided to give up paper tickets issued by travel agencies from the beginning of June 2008.
Electronic tickets will bring savings to travel agencies and airlines and more flexibility to passangers. Also, approximately 25 000 000 square meters of forest will be saved annually.
Finnair is showing good example by already selling 96 percent of its tickets as e-tickets. Read more (in Finnish): http://www.kauppalehti.fi/5/i/talous/uutiset/etusi..
Following the example of many companies in Finland and other European governments, the Finnish public sector has set the dead-line for receiving paper invoices. The dead-line is set to the end of the year 2009, after which all the invoices sent to the Finnish government have to be in electronic format.
Link to the press release by the Ministry of Transport and Communications: http://www.mintc.fi/web/fi/tiedote/view/272281
E-invoicing is definitely a real-time economy issue, but currently it has its downsides regarding user-friendliness. At least with a specific Finnish bank, the e-invoices come into the web bank without any reminder in the user's e-mail or mobile phone. This requires that the user (who has enough other things to do) needs to acitively check his/her web bank account to avoid invoices going past their due dates without payment.
A simple "electronic shephard", which offers reminders when an e-invoi..
The typical conference is still the same: rows of seats and a sage on the stage. Everyone listens to the guru for 30-45 minutes and then it's time for a few minutes of questions & answers. The day is full of such sessions and you have a rushed coffee break somewhere in between wher you try to "network".
Now, imagine that we have all of this technology and how it could be used to improve a traditional conference like this:
STORY: RTE is in everybody's interest but It is a long way. How can it be achieved?
There is no giant leap option. To get there we need to see the stairway and constantly keep moving up. In countries were payment references are in use many important automation features have already been completed. E-banking is an important element and needs to be improved further to cater for the next step - e-invoicing - in itself saving more than 230bn€ processing costs in EU - but even more importantly being..
