Supplier Enablement

Supplier Enablement - the future is coming. Or is it?

How times have you tried to predict the future and spent some time trying to understand those things that would influence your prediction?

I picked up on an article published by gtnews.com on July 04 2005 that had a stab at the 'Future of Electronic Invoicing'. gtnews.com is read by those in finance and treasury.

The future was described like so: The electronic invoicing industry is moving towards more inter-connected B2B solutions like federated networks.

So,some 18 months has passed is there any indication that this future is coming?

The article correctly highlighted the obstacles to buyers and suppliers from 'lock-in'. To strike an analogy; if you had to choose your telephone provider (telco) based on who you could reach by telephone using that telco then that presents you a problem if one telco can not povide you a service to reach everyone that you need to or might want to speak with. Of course this is not an issue because the telco industry understands their customers want a service that provides any to any connectivity.

The article suggested that the service providers that deliver electronic invoicing will need to deliver the same any to any connectivity that your telco does. Is there progress towards any to any connectivity using federated networks?

Le me know your views and I will compile your replies in a future blog.

posted by FrankB @ Wednesday, December 27, 2006