Electronic invoicing: a chance for change

Around 850 million electronic B2b invoices were issued between January and early June 2019, with around 2% rejected. And 8% of entities not covered by the obligation even chose to use electronic invoicing. But what are the benefits for the accounts payable and accounts receivable cycles? Why do some people feel it has increased the operative burden? The Research has identified six opportunities to be grasped, to move beyond merely meeting regulatory requirements. Because companies need to understand the benefits of this “forced digitalization” and how to extend it to other processes, to in turn increase the value of B2b eCommerce. B2b eCommerce was worth €360 billion in 2019, an increase of 7% on the previous year. A substantial figure, but still only 16% of overall transactions between Italian companies (€2,200 billion), whereas the penetration rate of eCommerce B2b between Italian companies and foreign companies is higher: at €132 billion it accounts for a 26% share of the total transacted with foreign companies (€500 billion). The use of EDI systems for electronic document exchange has also increased, with 210 million documents (+27%) exchanged by 16,000 companies (+23%), over a quarter of which are invoices. The use of Extranets has decreased (-21% compared to 2018), making way for marketplaces and new leading-edge technologies to support Business-to-business processes.