Businesses shy away from complexity of e-invoicing

FINANCE CHIEFS are turning away from the cost benefits of electronic invoices as they perceive them as too complex, new research suggests.

A survey of finance chiefs across Europe found 40% of larger businesses are moving away from e-invoicing as they believe it lacks an easy to understand standard.

Business services company Iron Mountain and YouGov, which conducted the research, released the findings this week. They found 36% of UK respondents would take up e-invoicing if there was a standard approach to this type of technology.

The research also found while most organisations understood the overall cost of finance operations, almost half did not know how much it costs to process a single invoice.

“Despite the huge savings possible, our research shows that many are not aware of the potential to reduce invoicing costs,” said Bettina Wonsag, general manager of the business process management (BPM) division of Iron Mountain.

CIMA’s technical specialist Peter Simons warned that companies need to balance cost cutting costs with investment in new technology.

Iron Mountain released its BPM service this week which allows invoicing to be outsourced to them, as well as storage of paper invoices.