Luckily we have been able to come up with the needed message standard already - implementation as network standard next - and end-to-end as soon as senders and receiver systems are ready. See more in earlier blog:

http://www.finextra.com/community/fullblog.aspx?id=4790

See: http://www.finextra.com/community/fullblog.aspx?id=4713

Do we really really really need extra B2B standards for e-invoicing? Really?

The EU Commission asked the Expert Group to get a global standard in place for Europe to use. With the UNCEFACT CII V2 content standard as a base it has been delivered in the ISO20022. Now it is being taken into use between service providers - aiming also as end-to-end usage.

We need both a global standard and a service provider network to get the needed interoperability, competition and progress in place. Self evident to enterprises and most service providers.

I'm not sure I understand this.  If anything there are too many standards for e-invoicing - EDIFACT, Finvoic, OIOUBL, SFTI, e2bformat, svefaktura - just to name a few.  And as Bo points out there is work being done on a harmonized, cross-industry standard for those that wish to adopt it.

A great signal for EU employment that a big company plans to hire 550 people for a new EU business unit focussed on invoice automation / e-invoicing. It raises some questions though:

1.  Are all or most of these 550 newly hired all going to be signed up for invoicing automation / e-invoicing?

2. If yes, in what way will the personnel costs affect their pricing model?

3. If standards are said the main issue, how are they going to/ can they change the behaviour of companies?

4. Off topic: Why can’t we find more information about this on their sites?

5. 99,5% of the population is SME, 57% of which is a single contractor and therefore also act as if they are consumers, how are they going to cope with consumer attitude towards ebilling? See this these survey results: http://bit.ly/enP9L7 (February 2011)

Still, with this approach maybe the EU doesn’t have to wait until 2020 to have e-invoicing become predominant.

Friso.

If we put eInvoicing within the larger perspective of the order-to-cash cycle of an enterprise, I just can't shrug off the feeling that its core value proposition is questionable: Sure, it can bring down DSO by a few days, but does it really matter when many typical CFOs and VP-Sales believe that the bulk of DSO is caused simply by customers refusing to pay on time? 

While a single standard always helps in theory, it generally happens only after mass-adoption of a certain technology. Besides, multiple standards never deterred the mass adoption of many technologies with strong value proposition, for example, Internet (OSI/ISO v. TCP/IP), Instant Messaging (lack of interoperability between, say, MSN and GTalk), and ERP (SAP iDoc v. Oracle EBS' XML-based document standard). 

In this context, the recent annnouncement of Intuit Payments Network (IPN) is an encouraging development. By coupling eInvoicing with ePayments, Intuit propels the value proposition of IPN to the next level, which might just be the tipping point in B2B e-invocing and e-payments technologies.