Is paperless invoicing as elusive as the paperless office, asks Deutsche Bank Research.
This is a good document in a space that is hungry for industry stats and independent thinking, however the report fails to make an adequate distinction between e-invoicing (B2B) and ebilling (B2C) in terms of the numbers and future of the industry.
These two concepts are both part of electronic billing & invoicing but have different models, goals and industry players.
I've set out a blog post on "eBilling - e-Invoicing : Lost in translation" that explains the issue and, hopefully, the difference.
It is indeed a good report. The only thing I would like to stress is that for 22m SMEs in EU an incoming invoice is a payment suggestion - for large enterprises more of one event in an often complicate procurement process. Thus I think that the discussion - catalytic or incremental is both and - catalytic step into automated accounting, automated VAT etc for the small - last step for the large (making payment automation easy - not enough noted btw).
© Finextra Research 2013