"E-invoicing adoption will increase through cooperation" say European e-invoicing executives

According to the study, the four-corner model was valued higher as a means to realize collaboration than the bilateral agreement, since the latter was not regarded as a scalable option to realize mass adoption. Adoption of a four-corner model in e-invoicing is seen as an important step towards mass adoption of e-invoicing and the basis for competition between service providers based on value added services rather than the reach of their respective user networks.

The study has also found that the current state of the market for e-invoicing is one of fragmentation, which prevents mass adoption of e-invoicing among end-users, especially small and medium sized enterprises. To end fragmentation and improve scalability, service providers can collaborate in a shared platform strategy, radically improving the proposition for senders and receivers of e-invoices.

In this study, two different strategies (multilateral and bilateral) were proposed as innovations and the willingness to adopt the innovations was tested among European e-invoicing service providers. The results showed that overall, European e-invoicing execs have a positive attitude towards cooperation based on a four-corner model with multilateral agreement. Despite this willingness to collaborate, there is still one big challenge that needs to be and that is the issue of interoperability.

The study has recommended that companies that are now ready to engage in a multilateral agreement should look for possible partners to set up collaboration. Focus should be on the parties who are willing and not so much on convincing unwilling parties to join. Additionally, once the four-corner model is in place, it is likely that other parties will soon follow, because of the strong and positive cross-side network effects (between senders and receivers of e-invoices). Furthermore, governments should facilitate this process of multilateral agreements including the harmonization of the legislation between European member states. This will ease cross-border traffic and decrease complexity for e-invoicing service providers and their customers.

The executive summary of the study can be found here.

A recent case underpinning the findings of this study is the start of ‘SimperInvoicing’ by a group of 14 Dutch and Finnish invoicing providers, sponsored by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs. For more information: www.simplerinvoicing.org.