Blog posts
Sähköiset asiakirjat alentavat kustannuksia ja sujuvoittavat toimintaa
Digitalous etenee Suomessa. Heinäkuussa 2022 maamme noteerattiin kärkisijalle Euroopan Unionin vuosittaisessa digitalous ja -yhteiskunta eli DESI-indeksissä. Kotimaisen ja kansainvälisten kaupankäynnin asiakirjojen digitalisointi on keskeinen digitalouden kehityskohde. Nämä asiakirjat, Suomessa yli miljardi vuodessa, luodaan, käsitellään ja vaihdetaan edelleen pääosin käsityönä. Kaupankäynnin kustannusten alentaminen, toiminnan tehokkuuden ja kestävyyden lisääminen sekä hallinnollisen taakan vähentäminen ovat sähköisten asiakirjojen hyötyjä.
Alkuvuodesta 2024 valtiohallinnossa otetaan käyttöön vakioidut, rakenteiset Peppol hankintasanomat. Sähköiset hankintasanomat – katalogi, tilaus, tilausvahvistus - täydentävät yritysten ja julkishallinnon jo laajasti käyttämiä verkkolaskuja lisäten myös verkkolaskujen käyttäjilleen tuottamia hyötyjä. Samalla Yrityksen digitalous -hankkeessa luodaan pohjaa sille, että muu julkinen hallinto ja eri kokoiset yritykset voivat toimialariippumattomasti soveltaa hankintasanomia myös omassa toiminnassaan. Laajan Peppol -palvelutarjonnan ja osaamisen synnyttämiseksi, sähköisten asiakirjojen hyötyjen todentamiseksi ja sähköisten asiakirjojen käytön lisäämiseksi Suomeen on perustettu kansallinen Peppol viranomainen. Valtiokonttori allekirjoitti heinäkuussa 2022 tätä koskevan sopimuksen OpenPeppol yhteisön kanssa. Valtiokonttori on maailman 18. PEPPOL viranomainen. OpenPeppol yhteisöön kuuluu jäseniä 40 maasta, muun muassa kaikista Pohjoismaista ja G7-maista.
Tämä blogisarja kertoo, miksi sähköisiä asiakirjoja tarvitaan, mitkä ovat sähköisten asiakirjojen hyödyt ja miten hyödyt syntyvät, mikä Peppol on ja mitä kansallinen Peppol viranomainen tekee, mitä hyötyä Peppol viranomaisesta on sähköisten asiakirjojen käyttäjille ja miten PEPPOL poistaa sähköisten EDIFACT asiakirjojen laajan käytön estäneet rajoitteet. Aloitetaan siis alusta:
Miksi sähköisiä asiakirjoja – ja Peppolia - tarvitaan?
Suomi on väkiluvultaan pieni viennistä riippuvainen korkean elintason maa, jolle myös tuonti on tärkeää. Sekä kansainväliseen että kotimaiseen kaupankäyntiin osallistuvat yritykset ja viranomaiset kuten ostajat, myyjät, huolitsijat, kuljetusyritykset, kaupan rahoittajat, verottaja ja tulli vaihtavat kaupankäyntitietoja keskenään. Rajat ylittävässä kaupassa osapuolia on useimmiten yli 10 ja kotimaisessakin kaupassa useita. Kaupankäyntitiedot vaihdetaan tarjousten, tilausten, kuljetusasiakirjojen, laskujen, ja viranomaisilmoitusten kaltaisilla asiakirjoilla. Yleisimmin käytettyjä asiakirjoja on 20–30. Kaikkiaan asiakirjoja on yli 100. Jokainen asiakirjan luominen, käsittely ja vaihtaminen synnyttää kustannuksia, jotka lisätään tuotteiden hintoihin tai joudutaan hyväksymään myyntikatteen heikennyksinä.
Suomessa vientituotteiden ja tuontituotteiden kaupankäyntihinnan päälle kertyy Liikenne- ja viestintäministeriön tuoreimman laskelman mukaan keskimäärin 13 % lisä kuljetusten sekä tietojenvaihdon ja -käsittelyn kustannuksista. Vastaava lisä on 6–7 % Keski-Euroopan maissa. Vaikka voimme tehdä maantieteestä johtuville kuljetuskustannuksille vain vähän, mahdollisuutemme vaikuttaa asiakirjojen luonnin, käsittelyn ja vaihdon kustannuksiin ovat suuret. Näin toimimalla lisäämme niin kaupankäynnin kuin kuljetusten tuottavuutta.
Verkkolaskujen lisäksi suomalaisissa yrityksissä ja julkishallinnossa luodaan, käsitellään ja vaihdetaan muita kaupankäynnin asiakirjoja arvioni mukaan 1,25 miljardia vuodessa, joista 10–15 % sähköisinä asiakirjoina. Arvioni pohjautuvat sveitsiläisen Billentis markkinatutkimuslaitoksen raportteihin ja EU:n kokoamiin tietoihin niin kutsutun eFTI (electronic Freight Transport Information) direktiivin valmistelussa. Billentis on julkaissut vuodesta 2006 vuosittaisen tutkimuksen verkkolaskujen maailmanlaajuisesta levinneisyydestä ja osuudesta laskujen kokonaismäärästä maittain yrityksissä ja julkishallinnossa. Billentis julkaisee myös arviovälin laskujen ja muiden asiakirjojen määrän suhteesta. Suomessa yritysten ja julkishallinnon käsittelemien laskujen määrä on tiedossa ja Suomea koskeva arvioni 1,25 miljardia perustuu Billentisin arviovälin keskiarvoon. EU:n eFTI direktiiviä varten kokoamien tietojen mukaan sähköisten asiakirjojen osuus on rajat ylittävässä kaupassa prosentin luokkaa - laskut pois lukien. Arvio 10–15 % osuudesta Suomessa perustuu maamme ja muiden pohjoismaiden edelläkävijyyteen. Alla esittämäni laskelman tuloksessa olen käyttänyt Suomessa käsityönä luotujen, käsiteltyjen ja vaihdettujen kaupankäynnin asiakirjojen määränä miljardia.
Useassa maassa tehdyt tutkimukset osoittavat, että tarjousten, tilausten, rahtikirjojen ja laskujen kaltaisten asiakirjojen luonti, käsittely ja vaihtaminen käsityönä aiheuttaa 15–20 Euron kustannuksen työn tekevälle organisaatiolle. Samojen tutkimusten mukaan sähköisten asiakirjat tuottavat 60–70 %:n kustannussäästön. Kustannussäästöt ovat sitä suurempia mitä enemmän asiakirjojen tietoja siirretään asiakirjasta toiseen sähköisesti yritysten ja julkishallinnon välillä. Yksittäisen sähköisen asiakirjan luonnin, käsittelyn ja vaihtamisen kustannus on alimmillaan 1–2 Euroa. Siirtyminen sähköisten asiakirjojen käyttöön tarjoaa siten suomalaisille yrityksille ja julkishallinnolle mahdollisuuden alentaa kustannuksia enimmillään 15 miljardilla. Siksi sähköisiä asiakirjoja – ja Peppolia – tarvitaan.
Lopuksi on syytä todeta, mitä sähköisellä asiakirjalla tarkoitetaan. Sähköinen asiakirja on koneluettavassa muodossa oleva rakenteinen tietue. Se luodaan tyypillisesti asiakirjan lähettäjän tietojärjestelmien tiedoista ohjelmallisesti ja lähetetään vastaanottajalle tietoverkon välityksellä. Ennen tietoverkkoon siirtämistä siirrettävän tiedon muodolle ja sisällölle saatetaan tehdä sen laadun varmistamiseen tarkoitettuja tarkistuksia. Vastaanottaja siirtää tietoverkosta vastaanottamansa tiedot omiin tietojärjestelmiinsä. Ihmistyötä käytetään asiakirjojen luonnin ja siirtämisen ohjaamiseen sekä niiden sisällön käsittelyyn, esimerkiksi laskun tietojen sisältötarkistamiseen. Sähköpostilla lähetettävät muut kuin koneluettavat asiakirjat, esimerkiksi pdf-tiedostot, EIVÄT ole sähköisiä asiakirjoja. Ne ovat paperiasiakirjojen sähköisiä vastineita.
Tomi Dahlberg
Kirjoittaja on kauppatieteen tohtori, joka työskentelee hallitusammattilaisena ollen Directors’ Institute Finlandin (DIF) jäsen ja kyberturvasta vastaava senior advisor. Hän työskentelee myös työelämäprofessorina Turun kauppakorkeakoulussa ja on Valtiokonttorissa osallistunut Peppol viranomaisen toiminnan käynnistämiseen vuoden 2022 aikana.
Published on November 4, 2020
DBE Core Platform is a new type of B2B information network service, an ingenious combination of standard business messages, Hyperledger blockchain and API technology. It is designed to bind ecosystem companies together into a large network of closed secure business networks. It is an efficiency booster. Closed business networks can be created flexibly to any needed business transaction purposes. To start, the platform stores and delivers business messages as Order, Order Response, Invoice etc. and re-uses the original data. Logistics processes will follow soon. Industry specific press releases on new business models will be published soon.
Globally there is now 1 100 Billion supply chain B2B and B2G documents exchanged annually, 95% manually, paper or e-mailed pdf files. And plus: 50 % more with trade finance and insurance document exchange, and plus: growing number of IoT-status data exchange (location, conditions, events). In Finland there are 800-1050 Million supply chain B2B and B2G documents exchanged annually, 90% manually, paper or e-mailed pdf files.
Removal of data re-entry task results in 15 € cost savings in western world companies. It is a type of work not adding any value for the company nor the end customer. Providing digital trust-technology based many-to-many exchange and distribution of supply chain data, DBE Core Platform removes the last remaining constraints of Real-Time Economy (RTE). This is a lot to say but we have thought this over in many scientific projects, several times, from all angles. It is true, and it is inevitable. This is the future.
At the business ecosystem level, if the buyer and supplier companies would not be connected to each other’s ERP’s digitally on the many-to-many platforms, people would still be moving pdf-documents back and forth between organizations with email. Mistakes would be generated, manual handling costs would be huge, work as such would be de-motivating, and order-order response times could be days. Well, this is reality today. Your employees do not create value for the customer.
Manual exchange of data is the least efficient way of data distribution, when done separately between each actor. Point-to-point. We know that the supply chain consists of multiple actors as buyer/receiver, seller/shipper, forwarder, transporter etc.
Manual exchange of data has forced the world to a common practice where two successive actors at-a-time do exchange business data. It is not necessary in the future.
DBE Core Platform facilitates distribution of business process data to all relevant parties of the supply chain, with re-use and enrichment. Finance industry (SWIFT) and telecom industry (message roaming) have had distributed documents and data organized in this way for decades and now DBE Core Platform makes this way available to supply chain data. Too late but finally.
Supply chain data, e.g. purchase orders, packing lists, are in digital form in company business information systems. When this data is exchanged, digital data is printed on paper or pdf files, causing manual data re-entry tasks for employees. Each data re-entry task destroys value and data quality, and no new value is created when the same data is re-entered.
Manual data entry by human results approx. 8% data errors, and only first creator of data knows the correct content. Later parties may detect errors but cannot correct them. Mistakes in data feeding increase when the business process goes further. This is pure waste. DBE Core Platform replaces these bad practices with digital exchange, with automatic re-use and enrichment of data. Blockchain brings immutability. No one can alter the data anymore.
DBE Core Platform is creating new types of systemic value, “event-based data multi-sharing” and “sequential process data reuse”. The mechanism shrinks the distance between those needing to know of each action instantly, and it shrinks the time between sequential process activities by reusing the same data. Following simple picture will illustrate this mechanism, which has been invisible before to the business world focused on tangible issues.
Systemic value is created by making those passes between subsystems as short and painless as possible. These passes should be automatized completely, IF manual human time and human touch does not add any value to the end-customer. This situation is utopic still now. Employees are destroying value in every second right now in the B2B business processes in the world. If a person feeds the same information from another form to another form manually, the employee is destroying value, and this waste will reflect as increasing prices to the end customer. Who benefits?
The big buyer company which realizes this will be the winner. It can create a business network overruling the competitor business network efficiency and agility.
Systemic value is hard to see if you do not emancipate nor observe the movement. Ecosystemic value creation is rather impossible to see or emancipate because it happens simultaneously in all places. We hope this article will open your understanding. When the general information complexity grows, it is imperative to grow systemic consistency of information flow around us.
Thanks for reading!
Karri & DBE Core team thinkers
Published on October 22, 2020
ERPs have improved company efficiency.
Trusted ledger technology will do the same to business networks.
Over the past two decades, companies have invested in their own efficiency by implementing various ERP systems. Presently, the industry leaders say “Company efficiency improvement has reached its limit, new focus should be developing network efficiency in order to improve competitiveness”. Politics, labor market, and global market conditions are difficult issues for any business leader to consider in their company strategy.
The next low hanging fruit can be reached by establishing a digital supply chain strategy as a part of company strategy. In light of COVID, the moment for this seems to be perfect but the companies should carefully plan around all the mistakes done in ERP system implementations. Millions of euros in investments have been spent, but very little has been done to achieve actual systems interoperability.
Fresh technologies like modern APIs, distributed ledger technology, and machine-readable document standards have reached maturity for implementation and deployment. This offering is now available as a platform for business networks or even ecosystems. We should avoid the mistakes done in the last two decades and focus on the platform to platform interoperability to secure future data flows.
There are simple control questions to be asked by any business leader when moving on to use platforms:
“Do you support global business document standards?”
“Are your API integrations based on relevant standards?”
“Are you offering a testbed to support systems interoperability development?”
It is not in any single company’s interest to develop their own standards for business processes, documents, data elements, and business rules, since this is all done by global standardization organizations. Experienced CIOs say ”Standardization is something you should not do in-house”.
Traditional system integrations can be notoriously complex and difficult to maintain. Properly designed and loosely coupled APIs can, however, bring about much more easily maintained integrations and save costs.
Distributed ledgers make sure that data is secure and immutable, so other members of the network can rely on it. For the first time in technology history, the owner of the data alone can have absolute control over the use of it.
When all these are in place the data will flow in real-time, error-free, and complete with exact timestamps. We call this “trust technology”. In the Core Platform and easy-to-use Core Portal user interface, you will find all these in place.
Published on October 1, 2020
Blockchain technology is still relatively speaking a new kid in the block. Over the past few years, it has been seen in the tech trend charts in various positions, from emerging to world changing, all the way to a failed technology. Most well known application of it is still the cryptocurrency. Most well known potential business application for blockchain is the management of supply chain information. Will it ever happen?
There are several factors which have to be considered for any individual technology to be seen as a mature, let alone a breakthrough tech. The timing has to be right, meaning that everything the tech in question has to mesh with has to be exactly in place and ready - otherwise it just won’t happen. The relevant business scenarios which utilize the technology have to tip from the side of nice-to-have on the side of must-have, or it just won’t happen. Finally, the teams and companies pioneering the application of the technology need to see their way clear all the way to the end, and keep from slipping towards the easy outs and half-measured efforts - or it just won’t happen.
As the perfect timing goes, the relevant international business messaging standards have spread and developed far and wide enough that they can be effectively utilized in a distributed database context. COVID-19 showed us that the supply chains are the most vulnerable targets in times of societal disturbance.
As far as the pioneering team goes, DBE Core has been at it as long as anyone can say they have been - and being an academic research spinoff company, in some aspects for longer than most. We have several years of hands-on experience with software development in blockchain technology. We have researched our way to understanding the critical and peripheral data flows necessary to planning and running supply chains. We have been active part of the work done in international business messaging standards associations and committees, and have learned the ways of applying them in real-world business situations. And we at DBE Core are confident in telling you that it will happen.
Published on September 7, 2020
As someone who has grown up surrounded by modern information technology, the lack of automated or standardized information sharing between organisations is really surprising to me. I did my master’s thesis on the subject. I also worked for a while as a project researcher in a university level research project. There I conducted research interviews in order to find out why automation and standardized information sharing between organisations is not yet the de facto standard.
A large amount of documents are still being exchanged manually. This means emails, csv files, excel spreadsheets, paper mail etc. Automating the information sharing between organisations would, among many other things, bring cost savings and enhance the quality of the shared data by reducing the need to re-key the same data many times.
One of the aims of the research was to get a better understanding on what the current level of information sharing automation actually is in companies. The interviews were conducted in Finland. The interviewees worked in various positions in the manufacturing maritime industry. The documents selected to the interview questions were order, shipping order, waybill, notice of arrival and invoice.
I have here 2 charts that show the current automation level and future automation plans according to the interviews. The number of responses doesn’t add up since some documents were skipped in the interviews if they were not applicable for the interviewees.
As seen in the first chart, invoice is by far the most automated document type. Order is also somewhat automated but there is still work to be done to achieve full automation. All the others documents: notice of arrival, shipping order and waybill are lacking behind in terms of automation levels.
The good news is that many interviewees stated that there were plans to start or continue automating many document types in the future. As seen in the 2nd chart here, invoice, order and notice of arrival were document types that many planned to automate in the near future.
Some interviewees also stated that they had automated some of the less widely automated document types already but were not able to benefit from the automation yet because their business partners had not automated their processes.
It is safe to say that there is still a lot room for improvement regarding digitalization and automated information sharing between organisations. But the way forward is clear.
Published on September 7, 2020
Speed is the new black. Companies can have significant impact on the working capital by making their processes faster. When goods flow faster between companies, it means money flows faster and companies can release tied up capital from the supply chain.
How does this relate to exchanging supply chain documents such as purchase orders and order confirmations and purchase invoices?
Here is how: when making your purchase orders digitally available to your suppliers they can deliver the goods faster and with less errors. Supplier can read in automatically your issued purchase orders and direct them correctly to production without user intervention.
At the same time, you will increase contract compliancy and you can be sure that agreed contractual terms are being followed and make sure you get DPO on the level where you are targeting with your payment terms.
When sharing documents digitally in an ecosystem platform you can have your order base financed in new ways and release working capital even more by adding financing services into the mix. In best case you can have a win-win situation with your supplier where supplier can be paid faster, and you can extend your payment term.
It is quite common to share materials such as documents, presentations and spreadsheets in platforms where the benefit is that you know you are always accessing the latest version, you can share it with anyone and you can see the version history.
When sharing your purchase documents in a platform you do not get only these benefits but in addition you help automate your business partners processes and you have new ways of accessing financing services to improve working capital.
Published on August 18, 2020
At DBE Core Ltd, we have created a digital platform which solves the problem of incomplete information exchange between companies. Thinking behind it is based on scientific research on business process automation and information models, and the solution which has been created is genuinely disruptive. Our network platform can be accessed through a cloud based interface, so you can run your business from a laptop - in the end, the network functions best when integrated directly in your purchasing management software.
Each business process can be described in a message, and we are supporting the UBL standard’s core version of such messages. This is the basis of our information model, and Linux Foundation’s Hyperledger Fabric blockchain takes care of the data integrity and trust between parties. To begin with, we can help digitize most of the routine purchasing workflows between you and your business partners. Immediate cost savings emerge from faster and fault-tolerant work processes in both ends.
Our Core Portal turns a buyer's order into a pre-filled order response from the suppliers side. Core Portal makes it possible for you to offer correct and reliable information to the supplier, who in turn can then complete the order information and confirm it. Having these two processes synchronized all the way up to the invoice will significantly reduce errors and unnecessary work.
However, this is not the end of this story. As soon as information can be trusted, several new aspects will emerge. A banking sector professional commented on our platform: “When the buyer and seller agree to share business transaction data with the financer, each transaction can be considered reliable and visible in real time. This allows for quicker financing, for example for the purpose of securing working capital. You can add the reference information in such a form to the invoices of micro companies that invoice information moves accurately to payment transactions.”
This is yet another truly disruptive change brought on by blockchain technology. Suppliers, if willing, can simply click ‘OK’ for automated financing, and the only base requirement is to participate in sharing reliable data in real time. When both the buyer and seller participate in the DBE Core Platform, to start with using the DBE Core Portal, their businesses can reap the benefits of digitalization. Let go of the emails and move on to the blockchain cloud!
Applying the DBE Core information model will make direct ERP integrations to the Core Platform faster and simpler. You mostly need to configure your firewalls to let the traffic pass, and fine tune your existing APIs to work with ours.
There is good news for the people who are in the front lines actually making sure that these processes happen! We have early research evidence that using our platform has positive associations for human values such as security, taking care of your colleagues and business continuity. People will feel better when they know that errors and mistakes are being eliminated automatically. What we are seeing is that digitizing your routine business process work will also foster innovation and give you room to prosper!
October, here we come :)
Greetings,