It Takes Two to e-Invoice: Why IT Should Align with Finance on e-Invoicing

Business leadership roles increasingly require IT’s support if they are to meet their strategic objectives. CFOs in particular need to be working more with IT as electronic invoicing is now a mainstream financial activity. As e-Invoicing gains ever greater importance as a tool for businesses to maintain an efficient supply chain, CFOs are being increasingly called upon to manage information and technology that would normally have been reserved for the CIO.

Electronic invoicing offers multiple cost savings and process efficiencies for Payables, Receivables and Treasury teams and is firmly on the Finance team’s agenda. But in many cases Finance are unaware that their company is already invoicing electronically. Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) has been a staple of business-to-business (B2B) transactions for over 30 years, but when it comes to electronic invoicing this proven model seems to be overlooked by Finance.

IT must continue to be the innovator when managing the supply chain and it is up to the CIO to ensure their CFO is fully aware of the capabilities of your company’s B2B service. Modern EDI mirrors what is thought of as ‘e-Invoicing’, providing similar functionality through web-forms and community portals while retaining is core integration strengths.