Jo riittää etumatkojen hukkaaminen

Kauppalehdestä:

Monesta vertailuraportista on käynyt kaikille selväksi, että kilpailijamaat ovat ohittaneet meidät tietoyhteiskuntakehityksessä. Vaikka tilanne ei olekaan niin huono, kun tarkastellaan suuri-volyymisten transaktioiden digitalisointiastetta, niin valitettavan usein olemme hukanneet selkeitä innovaatioetumatkoja.

Kun Internet tuli, olimme hetken johdossa valmiin laajan verkkopankkikäytön ansiosta, mutta luvattoman pitkään jatkunut turha ja kallis kansalaiskorttihanke jarrutti kehitystä julkisella sektorilla. Kun kansalaisia ei heti kehotettu käyttämään tuttuja pankkitunnuksiaan (tilittömätkin voivat niitä saada) myös julkisen sektorin verkkopalveluissa – niin etumatkasta häipyi ainakin kolme vuotta (esimerkiksi Ruotsi meni suoraan pankkitunnistamiseen).

Naapurit uskaltavat

Myös kuluttajamaksupalvelualueella olemme – ensimmäistä kertaa – jääneet kauas kärjestä. Tämä ei johdu palvelusta, vaan siitä, että esimerkiksi Norjassa ja Ruotsissa peritään itsestään selvästi maksuja paperilaskuista. Naapurimaat ovat oppineet meiltä, etteivät mitkään porkkanat olisi saaneet aikaiseksi nopeata siirtymistä verkkopankkeihin – siihen tarvittiin läpinäkyvää hinnoittelua konttoreissa ja maksuautomaateissa. Meillä vain Sonera on uskaltanut suoraselkäisesti ajaa läpinäkyvää hinnoittelua paperilaskuista. Kuluttajaviranomaiset ja –järjestöt kannattavat nähtävästi edelleen kulujen piiloperimistä – kun kuluttajan etu vaatisi kulujen alentamista eikä piilottamista.

Verkkolaskutussopimukset nopeasti käyttöön

Yritysten välisen laskutuksen osalta olemme edelleen globaalikärjessä koska noin 150 000 yritystä on jo verkkolaskupalvelusopimusten piirissä (Tieken osoiterekisterissä on vain pieni osa), ja transaktiomäärät kasvavat 10-20% per kuukausi. Tässä toistuu verkkopankki-ilmiö – sopimuksia tehtiin paljon – käyttöönotto tapahtui hitaammin - mutta jääkiekkomaila-ilmiö oli sitten yllättävänkin voimakas.

Kehityksen nopeuttaminen olisi nyt äärimmäisen tärkeätä, koska se voi niin selkeästi suoraan parantaa yritysten kilpailukykyä (parempi palvelu ja hintakilpailukyky), luoda pohjaa hallintorutiinikustannusten puolittamiselle, säästää verovaroja merkittävästi ja vähentää ympäristön rasituksia monella tavalla. Pankkipalveluiden digitalisointi säästi puolet pankkien kustannuksista. Verkkolaskutuksen potentiaali on eri arvioiden mukaan paljon suurempi - yhteensä yli kolme miljardia yritysten ja julkisen sektorin kustannuksista. Molemmissa tapauksissa näin parantunut kustannustehokkuus tulee monin tavoin asiakkaiden hyödyksi.

Verkkolaskutus mahdollistaa laajamittaista hallinnon rationointia

Euroopan komission tavoite on yritysten hallintokustannusten vähennys 25%lla ennen vuotta 2012. Komission verkkolaskutuksen Expert Groupin raportti ajaa siirtymistä madollisimman mutkattomiin käytäntöihin, ja loppusuoralla oleva uusi ALV-direktiivi ajaa mm kassapohjaista kirjanpitoa pieniin yrityksiin. Tämä - yhdessä verkkolaskutuksen kanssa - luo pohjan paljon suuremmalle tehokkuuden parantamiselle. Suomessa vuonna 2006 käynnistetty Real Time Economy ohjelma ajaa mm seuraavia tavoitteita:

- automatisoitu ja täysin paperiton kirjanpito

- reaaliaikaiset ja automaattiset kassavirtaennusteet

- automaattiset ALV-maksut (tähän tarvitaan pieni säätö lainsäädännössä)

- yhtenäinen raportointikoodisto kaikkien viranomaisten, rahoittajien ym suuntaan

RTE-ohjelma on TEKESrahoitteinen ja tämän vaiheen vetovastuussa ovat Taloushallintoliitto, Aditro, Tieto ja Aaltoyliopiston kauppakorkeakoulu. Julkinen sektori – varsinkin verohallinto - on ollut kiitettävän aktiivinen laajassa referenssiryhmässä.

Nyt tarvitaan konkreettisia ja rohkeita toimia

Suomi voisi tässä kulkea selkeästi kehityksen kärjessä jatkossakin. Tämän varmistamiseksi tarvitaan nyt selkeästi enemmän konkreettista rohkeutta ja päättäväisyyttä (naapurimaista mallia), jotta pohja – verkkolaskutuksen käyttö laajenisi nopeammin. Valtiosektori on tässä näyttänyt hyvää esimerkkiä lopettamalla paperi- tai PDF-laskujen vastaanoton vuodenvaihteessa. Monet suuret yritykset – hyvänä esimerkkinä UPM – tekivät jo viime vuonna saman liikkeen. Mutta kunnista toistaiseksi vain Tampere, Helsinki, Espoo ja tänä vuonna Turku ovat liittyneet tähän kustannustehokkuusrintamaan. Eikö kustannussäästö ja paikallisten yritysten kilpailukyvyn edistäminen olekaan tärkeätä kunnissa?

Yritysjärjestöjen edunvalvontaan pitäisi myös kuulua paljon näkyvämpi valistustoiminta omien jäsenten suuntaan ja kovien digitalisointitavoitteiden asettaminen. Silloin mediakin voisi paremmin analysoida ja seurata edistystä, eikä jäisi liikaa muutosvastarintaa edustavien harvojen äänitorveksi.

Bo Harald

e-banking high up

 

What are Internet users doing on the net? A new study (Redera) produced the following for Finland:

- looking for information             97%  

- e-banking                               95%

- customer feedback                   76%

- public sector services               71%

- shopping                                70%

- inquiries (about merchandise)   67%

- booking services                      49%

- interacting with associations     43%

- buying music                          18%

Comments - banking should be 100% - but in many cases it is done by either wife or husband - and rather few under 18 have used the option - as they seldom have bills to pay or much of balances to admire. The public sector is doing rather well - aided by using bank id for access control. Inquiries are too high up - web offerings apparently not easy enough. Music is low - Nokia comes with music.

As it is Mr Same Guy who use all these services it is getting increasingly important to see to it that the user experience is as similar as possible across services - irrespective of role  - there are no corporate customers.... as outlined in earlier post

Innovations do not come from outer space..

Innovations do not come from outer space - technology often comes - at least from space.

There is a long way for new technology to become an invention, then give birth  to a business idea which has the potential of becoming an innovation - a new practise which eventually is adopted by a critical mass of potential users - and then becomes the much sought after innovation.

My experience is that the innovations more often come - not from outer space - but from the everyday environment of the end-user. The base to jump from is his ready knowing-how-to - and it should be noticed that a good-enough-solution (habit-prison) will often stick - even if better solutions are offered. The best innovation is often re-use of existing familiar tools for new purposes (like bank log-on codes for public sector services) or just taking away enough complexity from a user interface.

Much resources is being spent on research and building base for innovations in the new-technology end. At one point it appeared that high spending was the target - not the result. I feel that there is a need for a rethink:

1. the alternatives offered by new technology is growing exponentially - technology allows anything - but end-users have only so much time and

2. at the same time the marketeers are continuing to push and by diversifying existing offerings pack the attention space even tighter with more-or-less relevant versions

Of course you have to know what new technology will enable - but start the road from everyday high volume practises to meet in the middle. And remember that your customers learn and pick up habit from many directions - you are not alone with him in this world.

Web evolution

Very good slideset - describing Future of the Web scenarios,

Pyramid upside down - finally

When we started e-banking back in -82 we saw it as a pyramid. A very broad base where customers do their everyday banking on PCs - checking balances, paying bills, getting notifications on direct debit  etc.

On this "habit" base and frequent traffic it was then possible to add tens of additional services - more seldom needed - all the way up to the most exotic. Some services became exclusive to the PC-bank - could not be delivered in a meaningful way in branches or contact centres. Then it was all offered also via the Internet - and it got more colors - but it was still the same service.

Now we are seeing an upside down pyramide. The base of it is potentially as wide as the number of payments - but the next layers are larger than the base - when it comes to value delivered to enterprises and society at large. The layers and the logic have been described here before  - but briefly:

Layer 1 -  the base is e-invoicing - transporting invoices, converting between formats, validating and presenting for easily automatable payment is producing a huge value in itself

Layer 2 - outgoing and incoming e-invoices and payments of them automatically generating cash flow estimates in real time is producing a higher value for the typical SME

Layer 3 - payments of e-invoices automatically performing the accounting by attaching a structured-form copy of the paid invoice to the electronic account statement is a higher value - not only for SMEs. This also serves as a base for full unification or reporting to the public and finance sectors

Layer 4 - payments of e-invoicing creating an automatic payment of VAT - instead of registering, reporting, then rembering and paying is of high value in transaction rich businesses

Layer 5 - e-invoicing copies being sent for approval to buyer and then for financing is creating big value both for sellers and buyers - especially these days

As tax payers we are of course pleased to take not that public sectors in many countries (how about your? - promote here)  are pushing hard for e-invoicing both to save costs in their own processes - and to further digitalization in the wide SME-sector - and save taz payers money in their own even more dramatic up-side down pyramid in layers 3 and 4!

Easy to see that this innovation stream should get the highest priority. The question we get is often "Wow - the only thing I do not understand is why we have not done already long ago!" The answer is that we have not been able to move earlier to XML based e-invoicing. But now we have - and even the most changeresistant should get embrace this wholeheartedly.

Enterprises - high time to stand up

Occasionally I get the impression that enterprises and their organizations are spending too much time on complaining (about regulation, about service charges etc) and not enough time on driving real change themselves. A part of this can of course be explained the ever growing demands on his time by all sorts of administration and growing competition for customers' attention and money. But now it is time to find the time and the way and to stand up - high time.

There are many fundamental reasons for this:

- increased complexity in society at large means that early influence is necessary to get views acknowledged - once things get going in wrong directions it is very difficult and in any case takes time to get a change (as admitting mistakes it often means face losing and failed investments)

- increased need for regulation, deregulation, competition enhancement > must be furthered together with democratic institutions

- technology tsunami, technology hypes, service fragmentation, lack of standards > must be furthered and evaluated together with democratic institutions - also with the public sector as there may be a risk that legislation otherwise technology-specific

- creation of digital platforms to automate administrative processes need critical mass - enterprises should be in the driving seat when making this happen (this also means recommendations for bold actions - not accepting too-typical short-sighted change resistance)

These challenges must be handled better than before to improve the competitiveness and sustainability of business in Europe. The key tool is digitalization and here the next step is to create the platform for real-time automation of next-to-all administrative processes.

The platform is simple - migration to e-invoicing. To make it happen fast it is essential that enterprises and their organizations in all countries continue to drive regulations so that no additional regulatory demands are put on electronic invoices and cash based accounting is enabled very widely. The European Commission is driving this in the VAT proposal and soon all member states have seen the importance of making the most secure technology neutral alternative easy. But there may still be some convincing to do to make sure that the outcome is crystal clear.

Otherwise we may still have the nobody in their right mind syndrome around.

Blogs and blogs

I have been writing blogs for about 3 years and it is helping me to get some messages and information out to partners, customers, students, researchers and others who share the networked economy passion.

About a year ago I was invited by finextra to start blogging on their site. As I have a background in banking and especially e- and 3rd generation e-banking I was glad to test out if my input would interest readers in this channel. Usually I publish the same stories in both - but add financial industry aspects in the Finextra version.

The results have been rather impressive. While 3 years here have produced 15 000 page views - 1 year in Finextra have produced 120 000.

What does this say? First of all that the media matters - easy to find > brings in readers and more comments (not much though). Secondly that you can reach the audience without the help of journalists. This "filter" is of course sometimes very useful - but sometimes it is not adding anything but time. Sometimes more "neutral" journalists naturally add credibility to your cause - but then again may take away part of the passion - and are not necessarily much more trusted than the writer. A conclusion may then be that both are needed - and that the demands on both is on the rise.

See the big picture, show the big picture, get going, go deeper, keep going - and all the time communicate so that the market (inlcuding your competitors) get it.

 

If you do not know where you are going - any road will do...

If you do not know where you are going - any road will do..This springs to mind when witnessing the plethora of alternatives created by today's technology and fragmented doings of both natives and immigrants on the Internet and in general.

Innovators are well aware of the growing NEED to innovate both for enterprise survival and for national competitiveness. Innovation does not have to be about inventing new technologies - it can - and should more often be about using existing technology for new purposes. It should definitively build on acquired habits - economy of repetition - whenever possible (prime example - use of bank codes for logging in to public and other sectors where strong e-id is needed - huge case of economy of re-use and economy of scope).

So what should the innovator do? To start with - get a clear mandate for driving change. Then create a strong vision - know where you are going. If it is a good-for-society-at-large vision it has a better chance to become a passion of many - and then also get the market making support needed to survive the first years of slow adoption (it ALWAYS takes time..). A widely shared passion is often needed to cut through, get going and keep going.

Get going today means that less time is spent on trying to predict the future - more time on testing out with small steps and much more on communicating (to make the markets). This is demanding as we live in the age of "Everybody writing and nobody reading". Pressing send is not enough - much more of real co-innovation work is needed. The it should always be easier to remember that only the simple-enough is good enough in the user interfaces. It is so easy to make it difficult - and so difficult to make it easy.

Republic of Finland - exemplary action

The State Treasury sent out letters to 16 000 suppliers to the public sector last week to remind them of the fact that only electronic invoices will be accepted as of 1.1.2010. The deadline for paper and unstructured PDF was announced already in the beginning of 2009 - and hinted to much earlier - so there has been time to take widely available low-cost-no-IT-skill solutions in use.

Judging from a few reactions to the letter and at least one headline in the press - this action was much needed. In these days there is so much going on that the mere setting of targets, hints, persuasion, communication etc do not lead to the intended results - even if all - in this case especially the tax payers and the information society - stand to gain massively from them. We clear deadlines and bold steps to enforce (Denmark outlawed paper invoices already in 2005).

Hopefully we will see equally determined action all over EU in 2010. Who could be against it?

Happy end for SME tale in sight..

We often hear the tragic tale about the SME-sector. Nobody is really interested in them and competing for their business. Not the banks, not insurance companies, not the accounting profession, not telecom and so forth.

The answer is simple - as they are so small they have small volumes = low transaction, financing, insurable and wealth volumes = low income - still high costs. In banking it is not so much the potential individual credit losses (they are small) that scare - more the very high cost of lenghty workouts and the personal tradegies these still too often entail. Happy-go-merry venture capital financed cases are not very frequent.

Now there is a happy end to this tale in sight:

1. banks can (for their part) deliver more value by offering e-invoicing transport, validation and formating as a very cost-efficient service and earn more in extended payments business > compete more for the accounts

2. the accounting profession can based on e-invoicing deliver more value by moving away from manual entering and paper chasing altogether and increasing efforts in analysis and advice and earn more > compete more for the accounts

3. banks and finance companies can lower financing costs by automating invoice financing (also for leasing) and moving deeper into supplier financing and earn more from higher volumes > compete more for the accounts

4. insurance, telecom, utilities, banks, accounting and so forth can lower their invoicing costs by moving to e-invoicing, e-agreements, e-statements etc - better customer profitability > compete more for the accounts

This all naturally needs a new attitude from SMEs:

1. embrace digital - ask for e-invoices and offer e-invoices (charge for paper whenever possible)

2. do not think that time spent on administration is not a cost (more time than ever before should be spent on selling, servicing customers, innovations, improvements etc)

3. do not think that new services should be free - naturally ask around for the best prices - still it usually pays off to concentrate buying

4. ask your banks and other service providers to come up with generic (customer- or supplier-specific solutions are difficult to handle and can tie you up too much) and service based (end of enterprise installed software in sight) solutions - e-invoicing working just like payments

5. realize that offering your customer and supplier e-invoicing, e-orders, e-rfps, e-offers will make you a more important partner as costs go down and intelligence goes up

6. realize that we will not have less reporting in the future - most likely more with sustainability and health in stronger focus - but by going digital next-to-all can be automated

The sooner SMEs really embrace this digitalization ladder - and take the e-invoicing step on it - the sooner we can reach the paradigmatic platform described here in earlier posts. This will truly liberate the SMEs from administration to business - a cause where the EC has already set challenging targets.

Snack Size Sociality

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Snack Size Sociality

View more presentations from Jyri Engeström.

Too civil civil servants

The public sector is increasingly outsourcing service production - and thus giving more space for the sector's management to do much more important work - policy making, driving change, creating rulebooks and so forth.

This is for sure a much needed shift in attention and should be welcomed also by business - especially as we all experience the same pain - technology is enabling everything - if we try to do everything - nothing will happen. And business naturally need to drive also regulation (and de-regulation) to save the planet and tax payers' money.

Are civil servants now living up to the new expectations? Driving bold agendas - sustainability, - productivity in society at large - change, change, change, private public partnerships (there is no public sector when it comes to services...), modernization, supporting enterpriseses etc?  Are they taking risks - like never before - to make things happen? Are they making mistakes - to learn from? Or are they still in the tradition of avoiding mistakes at all cost? Not doing much because of the no-mistakes code?

Much needed bold action will not quite yet be delivered by politicians (the do know what to do - but much thanks to media have not found out how to be re-elected if the do what they should).  There are reasons for us taxpayers and enterprises to both ask for more - and accept more steering. Less civil - but more real action.

From division of labour to interactive value creation

Teemu Arina drew my attention to Esko Kilpi's blog and I picked out a extensive quotes (emphasis mine) - full post certainly worth reading:

"Division of labour reduces organizational effort and cost of work. Division of labour also increases the quality of efforts through specialization. For this reason all societies and all enterprises are heading at least somewhat towards specialism. The assumption has been that the further the division is carried, the greater are the savings and the better the quality of contributions. This has led managers to focus on the efficiency of activities separated from other activities and organizational design and management seen as planning and execution of a collection of independent activities forming the organizational system.

The function of the line manager was accordingly to be the representative of his box, his domain of action and resources. The manager enjoyed a high degree of autonomy and was accountable only for that domain. The grounding principle in practice was: “don’t tread on my grass, and I won’t tread on yours”.

From action to interaction

As the demands for higher value and creativity are the norm today and the complexity of offerings has grown, we have begun to see that division of labour has reached its points of diminishing returns. What managers have learnt is that division of labour always implies a scheme of interaction by which the different divided activities are made to work together. The lines between the boxes are starting to matter more than the boxes! Complex value creation is impossible without interaction. This is because any higher value activity involves complementary, often parallel, contributions from more than one person or one team. In fact the more complex the offering is and the more specialized the resources needed, the more demands there are for the amount, quality and efficiency of communication because of the inherent interdependence of the activities.

The one-dimensional approaches to interaction have been top down command and control- or sequential work-flow based communications, where the action of one part is meant to set off the action of another. Interaction has thus been seen as one way signals, a system of senders and receivers (Shannon and Weaver 1948). These approaches seemed to work in simple, low value environments, but are not creating the desired results any more. What managers have lately found out is that in pursuit of higher value and when facing the growing demands of complex offerings the value of actions is limited by the value of interaction. The two are mutually dependent.

Activities and interaction are mutually dependent

A system of partial activities that go into the completion of the total offering implies always a scheme of interaction among the persons concerned. If the scheme of activities changes, even somewhat, the scheme of interaction should change too. As the two are mutually dependent, it means accordingly, that if there are changes in interaction, so will the activities change.

.....

We need to understand how the present ways of dividing labour have been historically based on a very different communications environment than we are living in at present.

.....

Managing the scheme of interaction – creating a social media/communication strategy

The activity systems and units of activity cannot any more be seen as a collection of independent activities and independent high performing specialists. There are however many challenges ahead if we adopt the thinking of seeing interaction as the governing factor in organizations. One of the challenges is our language. That is the way we speak about work following the system of subjects and predicates. Our language of work is geared towards handling one independent factor and one dependent factor at a time: “someone is doing something to somebody”. Linear cause and effect rather than thinking in terms of mutual interdependence and non-linearity is built into our management speech. Yet, a situation that can be described accurately in terms of linear, rational cause and effect is least common in social contexts. An organization consisting of people is always a social network following a different logic – complex causality. Organizations as social activity processes are about interdependent people working in complex interaction.

If we take this view, it means that people and actions are simultaneously forming and being formed by each other at the same time, all the time, in interaction. Instead of thinking in terms of spatial metaphors, of organizational levels, boxes and lines, this explanation focuses attention on how the actions of people are creating patterns in time following a very different approach to communication than the sender receiver model.

Organizations seen as patterns of interaction

Organizations can be described as patterns of communicative interaction between interdependent individuals. All interacting imposes constraints on those relating, while at the same time enabling those people to do what they could not otherwise do. Supportive, inspirational, energizing and enabling patterns of interaction are the most important raison d´être of working and being together. If we see interaction as the governing factor and see organizations and organizing as relations between interdependent people, our methods of sense making need to change. Social interaction is not following linear causality, seen as a system of senders and receivers, but is fundamentally non-linear, responsive and complex. Following this logic, organizations today and information based value creation in general, can only be understood if seen as complex, communicative patterns of mainly digital interaction.

Back from interaction to action

Resource allocation has always been one of the main tasks of management: planning what is to be done by whom and by when? In integrated systems and with homogeneous resources, this allocation can easily be done top-down and in-advance. Planning can take place separate from action. When knowledge resources are the decisive factors of value creation and when work takes place in digital, global, decentralized environments, this top down process is increasingly inefficient. A manager cannot know who knows best or where the most valuable contributions could come from? The solution has been so far to try to “know what we know”, and even more importantly try to “know who knows”. Neither of these approaches has quite fulfilled expectations. The knowledge databases have not met the situational needs of users. Accordingly, people have not been able to explain to others or even to themselves in a meaningful way what they know.

Because of the aforementioned growing needs in daily organizational life a new, different approach has to be adopted. One could even claim that a new mode of knowledge based production is now emerging in, and because of, the digital networked environments. The most important platforms for the new production systems are social media platforms.

This new production method refers to a new economic phenomenon: People from the whole network contribute pieces of their time and expertise to tasks, emergently, based on their interest, availability and experience, working in a transparent, open environment. This method has systemic advantages over traditional production hierarchies when the work in progress is mainly immaterial in nature and the involved capital investment can be distributed. For most knowledge based products and services, this kind of production is the most efficient method of creating value from a resource allocation point of view.

The system is as much developed bottom-up as top-down. In a top-down system everything is created and provided by the organization to the user. The user has none or very little control over what services, information and people are available for him. Instead of forcing people into predetermined groups like groupware does, social media facilitates the natural formation of groups based on spontaneous, contextual needs for interaction. In social media, people affiliate through personal choice and need. Understanding this difference in community formation is crucial for building self-sustaining, dynamic communities.

.....

The primary goals are increasing the value and quality of information and the value and quality of interaction and at the same time lowering the transaction costs associated with information and interaction. Even more importantly, open interaction platforms like Wikis are a medium for sharing what we would like to know next, where we would like to go, what we would like to explore?

.....

Interactive, iterative work

... Content should be seen as the by-product of conversation. Perhaps in the future of digital work IT does not mean Information Technologies, but Interaction Technologies.

..... An organization should today be understood as complex, self-organizing, iterative patterns of interaction, through which both continuity and novelty emerge as patterns in time."

As said really worth reading - especially these days when too often everyone is writing and nobody is reading in organizations with old-fashioned command structures. Too many still believe that pressing send means that all will read the message and if doing so will have the time or incentive to change behavior...

All included here

It took some time  and a tens of meetings to get this report  in place. But it was time well spent as the iteration rounds unified the opinions, fully supported the EU VAT directive for equal treatment of paper and e-invoices and above all underlined the fact that EU cannot afford to delay the migration - so much productivity is at stake - and so steep will the decline in workforce be in the coming years. The report will be out for public consultation and I do not expect any real objections (very few insist on mandatory e-signatures these days).

When looking further all this becomes even more clear that the benefits are massive. The paradigmatic platform formed by keeping invoice information in structured form allows easy automation of virtually all administrative processes!

But first the platform by:

1. widely offering servicebased low-cost tools for every SME

2. setting deadlines for incoming paper and unstructured PDFs to be set right away

3. charge transparently for outgoing costly paper invoices

4. public sector to move among the first - no right to waste tax payers money in manual processes

Germany: E-Invoicing as part of the coalition contract

Quote from Bruno Koch's newsletter

"The newly elected German Government plans to accelerate use of electronic invoices in Germany by removing barriers hindering their adoption.

E-Invoicing is to be enabled in a more unbureaucratic manner. The author of this newsletter will keep you informed about future decisions and development."

My comment: As we could read in the Deutsche Bank report the annual savings potential is 54bn - in Germany alone. North of 250bn in EU. Small wonder this is now getting full attention.

But we need bold action - price tags for sending paper invoices and deadlines for accepting paper or unstructured PDF - ONLY then it will become a reality in time to be a part remedy for coming shortage of people in working age..

Tietovideo

Tieto in 80 sec

Sonera showing the way in Finland

Charging for paper invoices has been a touchy subject in Finland even if:

- all experience shows that transparent pricing (producing "negative carrots..") is the only efficient way to make mass markets move fast

- consumers say that they will not change behaviour just for the convenience produced by semiautomatic payments ("if I would have to pay even ten cents I would not ask for paper")

- the national e-program has set and the Minister in charge of it (Minister for Communications - Mrs Suvi Linden) has been very outspoken:  2011 should be the "last" year for paper based consumer invoicing of any significance

- consumers start to understand that they pay all costs - it would be better if they were visible and entice them to save

- some consumer already choose service providers with this open and just pricing ("Why should I pay for expensive practises of others?"

- the often referred to succes story  in e-banking would not have happened as fast without charging more for bill payments in branches

- paper invoicing is openly charged for in other Nordic countries

Fortunately there are some progressive companies that show the way. Sonera was first and the leading one. The 1 € is working wonders - as can be seen:

Final report on e-invoicing

final report by the EC Expert Group now public.

Social web growing big time

EU Ministerial meeting

Tieto CEO Hannu Syrjälä speaking at EU Ministerial meeting. e-government is more about helping enterprises to become more competitive - naturally also way to save tax payers money - with public private partnership and good e-design.

Right direction in Belgium

This rapid action - now in Belgium is a very welcome step in the right direction. Practioners know that structured e-invoicing is so much more secure, that there are no needs to impose mandatory digital signatures.

The technology neutral approach means that businesses can rely on the same business controls they use for their present invoicing and deploy - when they see fit - additional tools. It is now important that the work in progress by DG Taxud leads to full support for wider simplification and unification of equal treatment cross-EU.

Then the administrative burden from local and other-country rules will be cut and migration to paradigmatic platform for further automation and simplification speeded up.

We look forward to the next country following and possibly even improving on the example from Belgium.

Final report on e-invoicing approved

The EC Expert Group on e-Invoicing has approved its final report. It will be published in within the next weeks. The work has involved a total of close to 60 experts over nearly two years and has already had a significant effect on the activities both in the market uptake, in the standardization  area and in the regulatory simplification and unification efforts by the EC and Member States.

The readers will see that the report is recommending rapid actions by all parties involved based on the fundamental principles of technology neutrality, substance over form and furthering of competition. The focus has from the beginning been on next-to-eliminating the thresholds for SMEs to move into digitalized business communicating - increasingly demanded by their trading partners and the public sectors. A very important step in this direction would be EU-wide implementation of the equal treatment principles (no additional demand on electronic invoices - in relation to less secure paper/fax/PDF invoices) in the new VAT-directive. WIthout this it will be more costly and much slower to move into a single market - and if for example digital signatures would stay mandatory - virtually impossible for law-abiding enterprises to exchange e-invoices bilaterally without use of service providers.

A rapid migration away from inputting information into unstructured form is needed. Also the wasteful practises of de-digitizing invoice information with print or pdf and then re-digitizing scant information left must end fast.

Both actions needed for direct productivity improvements and above all to rise to a new paradigm in all aspects of business administration. This will enable in practise totally automated accounting, reporting and VAT-payments in real time and producing new dimension of value for both customers and public authorities. We call it a Centurial Reform. Demontrating the huge benefits to SMEs should take away the last resistance to changing old habits - especially as it can be done without investments and IT-skills.

The new paradigm presents a real opportunity for EU to both improve productivity with much more than the impact of 25% cut in administrative costs by 2012 set as a goal by DG Enterprise (as such not realistic without mass digitalization) and also to continue to lead global standardization and rollouts in this fundamental area.

Liberating the power of SMEs

Most of us have seen how small enterprises can be innovative, fast and agile - when larger ones show up as lumbering giants - trying desparately to cure themselves with new "management" tools. Long way to go before management is less about control and more about leading change.

One reason for favoring large enterprises has been that the inevitble cost of administration - bookkeeping, IT and the like - can be spread out over a larger number of units sold.

This may now be changing as we are seeing that it is not particularly difficult to automate away most of the administration once b2b interaction has been moved into structured formats. Electronic invoicing is the paradigmatic platform for this and above all SMEs should run for it.

What could it mean for competitiveness of EU countries if:

- the cost of unnecessary manual transactions have been eliminated  with a full digitalization drive http://boharald.blogspot.com/2009/10/e-invoicing-enabling-platform.html

- increasingly scarce workforce has moved from causing only cost to hunting income in enterprises

- SMEs - freed of administration work and cost http://boharald.blogspot.com/2009/11/bloodletting.html - can deploy their full potential - do much more of the work presently done only in large enterprises

- venture capital realizing that there are is a new paradigm in the SME sector

We are on this road - but it takes quite some energy to get the ball rolling in all countries.

Finns twice as mobile as Swedes

A Nordic study (PTS in Sweden) reveals that the mobile share of minutes in outgoing telephone calls in 2008 were the following:

Finland          83%

Norway          55

Denmark       54

Iceland          48

Sweden         41

The study is claiming that fixed line telephony was so much cheaper in Sweden that this explains the difference compared to Finland. I do not share this view - it just seems to be so that Nokia had a bigger fashion impact on behavior than Ericsson. Sweden was distanced by the other countries as price on mobile and SMS nosedived earlier and faster than in Sweden.

Bloodletting

In the old days bloodletting was considered to be a universal cure to diseases. Later when it was realised that it could have only negative effects it still continued for quite a while. Old habits die hard.

There are many similar practises today and the guy sitting on the chair is a typical SME letting himself be subject to a plethora of painful reporting and paperbased practises - even if there are modern cures to his disease = lack of time for real business due to an uncontrollable mass of difficult to understand practises, unnecessary auditing, non-harmonised reporting to authorities, customers, suppliers, financiers etc. All causing high stress levels and from time to time give-up mentality in this by-volume and often also by-agility most important enterprise segment.

The EU Commission has set a goal of cutting costs caused by administrative burdens in enterprises by 25% by 2012. Much more can be achieved by moving away from the expensive habit of de-electronizing invoices by printing or PDFing and thereby losing most of the valuable information - only to use time and big money to re-electronize it. Once a critical mass of migration from this "bloodletting" has happened there is a platform for:

1. eventually totally automate accounting for SMEs (link the e-invoice duplicat to the electronic account statement)

2. automatically produce a realtime cash flow forcast

3. automatically link payment behavior and credit scoring information to e-invoicing, e-ordering, e-rfps and e-offers (same template poducing mostly the same data elements)

4. automate invoice-financing

5. move to real time VAT-payments - instead of costly accumulating+reporting+paying+reclaiming in case of non-payment etc

6. unify reporting codes used both in relation to public sector and other reporting - and thereby create and support also unified accounting charts

All this and more - in one package. Who could be against it? Especially with the coming nosediving of number of EU citizens in working age.

Nudge - not enough

Started to read Nudge by Thaler & Sunstein. Easy and nice reading - essential thought provocation needed at the latest now. 

What we have is a long list of very serious global challenges - ranging from global warming (which is furthered by unfettered blind growth) to financing of welfare structures (which is coming out of productive and successful enterprises). What we do not have is a wide enough awareness of the fact that it is the sum of every individual's choices that matters.

Even where this picture is clear it is far from agreed what measures should be taken to guide these choices in a way that does hurt the individual less directly and save the planet from some of the further disasters.

Even when the methods are worked out it is very seldom possible to get them politically accepted and implemented as politicians have to be re-elected and media far too often - for quarterly capitalistic reasons - search out and make big fuss about those who resist change (instead of educating the public). Fabricated drama sells even more than just scaring people with bad news. Unfortunately all the killer bees, year 2000 planes falling out of the skies, swine flues etc stories have caused the healthy media skepticism to become unhealthy - the so much needed and before respected watchdog is increasingly seen as a purely selfish spammer. 

Maybe this all is why the writers underline the right of choice for the individual and recommend very gentle and invisible nudging to steer individual behavior into the direction of their own immediate interest (example: 60% of Americans are obese or overweight). Naturally I agree that this "choice architecture" should be built into just-about-everything and feel that the risk of somebody may be overdoing it is smaller than under-doing these days. But I do not think it is going to be even nearly enough.

What we need is a clear, just and transparent pricing. You pay visibly - and upfront for whatever you do - and the harmful for you and the environment should today be even clearly overpriced. Monetary incentives can and often should be given when investments are needed. The need for transparence, sticks and carrots is demonstrated by the failure of emission rights trade. It is not leading to intended results as much of the rights have been obtained for free - and have thus not incentived the industry to invest enough. The markets in any case spread the cost and pass them on to endusers irrespective of how the energy has been produced - no sticks - no carrots - no effect. My own experience from 30 years of banking and now also from other areas (latest one e-invoicing)  tells me that even big carrots are not leading to fast change - "never underestimate the power of inertia" - but even small sticks work wonder. Partly surely because the consumer gets irritated (I am not going to pay those bastards more..). Much fired up as media and consumer ombudsmen (they too often do protect costs - not consumers..) take the populists' side. But surely also because a growing number of people understand that this is just and needed. If they can help their service providers or the public sector to save costs and environment - they stand a chance to get lower costs, lower taxes and less emissions.  

So we need brave decision makers - and visible support for them. Maybe it is time for a new Facebook Cause: "You pay anyway - why not visibly?"

TV still slightly ahead

Internet has gained 117% from 2004 to today, radio lost 16%, newspapers 17%, magazines 6% - but TV kept its position (source Forrester). And this is the population at large - surely the trendsetters have changed even more.  Small wonder that advertising has followed. Interestingly - changes 2008-9 are smaller or even reversed.

The big change is of course that Internet comes with easy interactivity, payments integration and strong e-id tools. Naturally also entirely new dimensions of personalization with connections to different databases (especially databases of intent via Google) and learning IT in the background and teaching in the foreground. We have only seen the beginning of Advertisement as a Service.

Invisible hand? Guiding where?

The Economist run an article Questioning the invisible hand last week.

Starting off with the meltdown in the financial industry in several countries it then zooms in on the energy industry's apparent inability to secure supply for the future in UK and moves on to greenhouse gas emission report from the Committee on Climat Change:

"The market, left to its own devices, is failing to deliver

- consumers are not moving to energy-efficient appliances or insulating their houses

- carmakers are failing to get emissions down

- power companies still prefer fossile fuels to greener alternatives"

Bracing dose of re-regulation prescribed: compulsory emission caps for cars, feed-in tariffs for green power, minimum carbon prices - plainly put by David Kennedy: "We've stuck with the market a long time. We don't think we can stick but it any more."

So we have global warming, diminishing supply of clean water, looming shortage of electricity in some countries,  huge cost of overmedication, slow adoption of cost-saving automation of administrative processes, slow migration from crime-enabling use of cash, too slow progress in building the EU Single Market and now it seems an open cheque from taxpayers to too-big-to-fail investment bankers to earn oversized bonuses  by - some time again taking excessive risks (looks like one-sided options to many) etc etc.

It should be clear enough that we cannot risk leaving all this to invisible hands - instead a very visible hand i needed. The problem is that the public sector has stuck too much to service production and have scant resources for these challenges. Business should also for that reason be a proactive driver of good-for-society-at-large regulation - and de-regulation. A  co-regulation approach will be faster, must better and less costly. The alternative is likely to be very costly over-regulation.

Back from the boiler room

In the old days the CIO was often a board member - as important as business area executives.

Then came the age of internal procurement processes and the IT-departments were sent to the boiler room and told to show up only when asked to. Business will tell them what will be done and IT could decide how it should be done - but do it fast and much cheaper and not complain about architecture and such things. If IT did not deliver on SLAs they had to pay penalties (sic!).  Business often enough ganged up with vendors who understood how easy it was to implement new things - just add some servers and it will run - integration can come later.

I have never bought this artificial departmentalization. As technology is the mega-enabler for most change - and business should understand that better together with the realities in the legacy systems. CIOs should work much more closely with business also to be more proactive drivers of change.  Horizontalization is the answer to better agility - not making silos even more isolated.

Making it complicated..

It is very easy to make things difficult but very difficult to make things easy.

As a result we see that many service are not the least user-friendly - not in design - not in language - too complicated - a no-brainer.

The business environment is also  getting fiendishly complicated as technology offers so many new alternatives with so many new hypecurves popping up. Management is in place for controlling - not so much for innovating and the answer is often new control methods and more reporting - threatening to increase the drowning feeling as illustrated by Dilbert:

What is then the answer - how can large organizations become more agile instead of less? Not easy - but trust managers more is a must and networking with smaller enterprises an interesting alternative that deserves more efforts.

Cash and crime

Computer Sweden writes - inspired by frequent high profile robberies - that cash is an invitation to crime. Legislators, banks and retailers are to blame for having failed to eliminate cash usage - despite cards having been around for 30 years on a large scale.

Not only are piles of cash inviting robbers - it is also the enabler of drug trade, prostitution, illegal gaming, etc. Without cash these activities would have a hard time.

I would add that EU has presented figures where cash handling adds 50bn€ costs mainly to merchants every year. Consumers pay every cent of this totally unproductive counting, protection and transportation work. Silly practis to de-electronise bank balanaces by withdrawing cash and re-electronizing it soon again back to another bank account. Furthermore the CO2 quantities added and  congestions caused by the daily parades of armored cars are major.

Naturally there can be some privacy issues - but these can be solved at minor cost - especially compared to the cost of crime. Now is the time for action.

The story concludes by encouraging new signs: "We do not accept cash." The technology is certainly ready for it.

E-invoicing - enabling platform

Could this be the order?

1. see the big picture - exciting to say the least

2. get the fundament in place - fast before the market is hopelessly fragmented

3. bold steps to migrate (deadlines for unstructured invoicing, transparent pricing) - can we afford anything else?

4. then start building on the mass market platform - legislators surely needed - but can we afford to miss the opportunity to cut administrative costs for SMEs with 25% first and then 50% more with automated accounting and unified reporting codes and real time VAT..

Old folks in America - great progress

Internet users are addicted

Also the elderly are daily users - 66% - only 9% less frequently than once a week (figures from Finland - Tilastokeskus)

Why do we need to underline this? Beacuse all have not yet understood that Internet is NOT a supplementary channel - but increasingly the main one.

Some way to go in Europe

To twitter or not to twitter

There is a general feeling that social media tools can help business and other organizatons. Almost equally common is the feeling that it is difficult to find out how to do it. A bit frustrating -  as it is so obvious to most of us -  that it is handy to know  from Facebook that  the friend you have not me for decades likes working in the garden.

How could this be translated to internal and external communication? If we Twitter out our corporate events, publish them on Facebook etc - will it be registered and found useful by those who should know as widely as the gardening friend to his circle?

The tools are there - only question is if the intended receivers of the messages will have  the motivation and time to pick up the message. The answer is probably that at first you should let this info ride on messages your customers and employees will read in any case. If the additional load is useful or fun it will be appreciated - irrespective of channel and tool. But it has to be short and sharp - the age of one-liners is here.

Internet users by age group in Finland

Grand total 82% - fastest growth in >65. Quite obvious that 100% is on the cards. Why would it not be?

E-banking in the old days..

In the old days - especially in the 80s before Internet - e-banking was seen as a supplementary channel - in addition to branches and contact centres. Today it is the main channel for almost all  services - both for the customer in his private role and in employee roles of so called corporate customers. All banks have not yet adjusted their strategies accordingly.

The importance for the adjustment is accentuated by the huge success of Internet as service channel in virtually all sectors and the need for banks to be embedded in these services with e-id, e-signing of contracts, realtime e-commerce payments, e-rfps, e-offers, e-orders, e-invoicing, e-accounting, document presentment and fronting of archiving services here.

A big challenge is the fact that the user experience not only digital natives but also immigrants rapidly are gaining is coming from global players with excellent tools - like Itunes, Spotifies and Facebooks. It is far from easy to live up to all these expectations in e-bank portals on the back of decades old legacy systems. Actually it may be better to not even try - but to focus on bringing in more value instead - in the 3rd generation-connecting-customers-e-banking domain - without going for all bells and whistles in the interface.

Internet has certainly changed the scene:

- 25% (1,7 bn) of world population use it

- 4 bn have mobile phones - most soon connecting to Internet

- 100% of 16-34y segment use Internet, 97% in 35-44, 91% in 45-54, 70% in 55-64 and 33% in > 65 - usage is growing very fast here (figures from Finland - not that different elsewhere)

- 82% are using Internet for product information, 54% buy goods (clearly higher elsewhere)

So it is the main channel for everything - and should naturally be so for banks - but not only in the form of the multi-service customized and personalized bank portal - but embedded all over the e-commerce and e-government space -  where old and new banking services are needed. We have the right to demand this - as it improves services, lowers costs and saves tax payers money.

Real action to cut 25% of admin costs

If you can lower the treshold to e-invoicing - as suggested below (emphasis mine) - you can automate accounting, public sector reporting, further the single market and much more. Then EU and member states have a chance to reach the 25% goal by 2012. If not - no chance. Who will take the responsibility for such fundamental failure? Stoiber and Verhaugen are certainly doing their very best.

"Weitere Forderung der Stoiber-Gruppe: Rechnungen in Papierform und in elektronischer Form sollen gleichbehandelt werden. Derzeit gibt es für elektronische Rechnungen rechtliche Hürden, etwa im Hinblick auf die Anerkennung seitens des Finanzamts. Den Segen der Kommission hat Stoiber, bei der Umsetzung der Initiative spießt es sich jedoch auf Ebene der Mitgliedstaaten: Vor allem Berlin winkt ab.

http://www.wirtschaftsblatt.at/home/international/wirtschaftspolitik/390087/index.do?_vl_backlink=/home/index.do&_vl_pos=1.DT

A Mof representive from Belgium said that the plan is to follow the Netherlands – the task force is hopefully speeding up the progress.

BELGIAN TASK FORCE E-INVOICING

Une initiative des fédérations d’employeurs et d’entreprises

Pour une percée de la facture

électronique en Belgique

Nous attendons de la Belgique qu’elle contribue à faire approuver la

proposition de la Commission européenne dans les plus brefs délais.

Dans ce cadre, il est essentiel de ne pas toucher aux aspects

fondamentaux de la proposition, à savoir :

- l’égalité de traitement des factures papier et électroniques;

- la neutralité technologique, tant pour la facturation que pour

l’archivage;

- l’harmonisation du contenu des factures;

- la détermination précise de la législation nationale qui est

applicable dans un contexte transfrontalier;

- l’élimination des possibilités d’option pour les Etats membres.

Si la proposition ne devait pas être approuvée sous la présidence

suédoise, elle devrait alors devenir une des priorités de la présidence

belge au second semestre de 2010. C’est d’ailleurs sous présidence belge

que la précédente directive avait été approuvée en 2001."

Are enterprises in Germany doing anything similar?

 

Now that we have the happy confluence from TBG1 and 5 and can really start to believe that a network standard could be established soon – it would of course be extra disappointing if regulatory constraints would continue to stand in the way of cross-border invoices. Single market – just talk…

Widening Adoption Gap

Technology is not the narrow sector - it is amply on offer - and the costs are going from low to lower. Technology enables "anything" and in most cases the utility is evident. The adoption gap is still widening - even too much. Why is this happening?

In some cases it may be the less than perfect first versions that have scared adopters off. More often -I believe - it is the multitude of things to adopt - in relation to the hours of a day (less time for any one thing), that prevents adoption. There simply is not the time or the energy needed for familiarizing yourself with the next thing.

When looking at the dilemma from a service angle it is evident that:

- clarity in language is helping much - especially when going for the mass markets

- simplicity in user interface is increasingly critical

- addressing everyday needs holistically - often calling for collaborative offerings - instead of esoteric narrow interests with standalone products

- economy of repetition should always be used. Learn once - use everywhere - across services, service providers, public & private sectors and across roles (private, employee, citizen) - as outlined in previous post

 

Four Economics

Banks should move up the order-to-payment value chain from payments and down the payment-to-accounting value chain - before invaders move down or up into the payment business. The reasons are fundamental:

- better service - better value - new revenues certainly needed when float disappears, interest margins remain low and fee income in commoditized services erodes

- the networked economy means that banks have to come up with new deeply integrated services - not-changing is not an option

- take the responsibility for society at large as banks can deliver I. four economics, II. support three neutralities, III. use two-sided networks and IV. move to one generic messaging platform.

I. Four economics

Banks are best placed to deliver - for their part (in multi-service-provider networks) these essential lubricants and fuels for the networked economy - and have indeed a responsibility to do so:

1. Economy of repetition

Meaning that a familiar and trusted tool can be used for new purposes. In the technology, device, service and information overflow age (Alex Wright in Glut p 6) this is becoming more important than ever. To get critical mass of user adoption it is not only necessary to have the same user experience across services, but also across roles (private customer, corporate customer, citizen..) and furthermore export the experience to other service providers by embedding the service in their offerings.

Examples of what banks can do is to offer the e-banking log-on tools to the public and other sectors as a service (also for non-banked), deploy the e-banking and payment networks for e-orders, e-invoicing, e-salary and e-notifications.

People in pre-banking age do not have the habit of using strong e-id and payments but are quite used to chatting, messaging, Youtubes, Facebooks, gaming and younameit. Good service to them means that introduction into the inevitable e-banking (and onwards as above) should be built on their habits - importing to banking.

Learn once - use everywhere! It would surely be interesting to study what kind of productivity improvement and GDP effect widespread use of Economy of repetition in these heavy-duty highvolume areas would have.

2. Economy of reuse

As described above strong e-id infra, e-banking portals and file transfer systems can be reused for other sectors.

Not having to invest in separate smart cards for citizens means billions of savings of tax payers money. Less need for support, training and upkeep of systems on EU-level and the prime target - faster uptake is naturally easier with familiar and trusted tools.

Re-using portals, existing routing, addressing, presentment for extended payments means substantial savings for business.

Re-use must be the first option! Especially in the public sector.

3. Economy of scope

Economy of scope means that you can sell more to the same familiar customer > lower sales costs is a benefit for both sides. Buying more from one supplier is also a convenience factor. Transparent pricing is important - both to guide customers and ensure fair competition.

4. Economy of scale

Reuse payment networks for other messages creates substantial economy of scale - as does reuse of bank e-id (annual e-bank volume in Finland with 5 million population is 300-350m - public sector for example so far needs only 10-20m strong id-transacations).

Banks can and should follow the Nordic-Baltic examples - as they have the partly unique ability to make migration to e-services and integrated EASIER, LESS EXPENSIVE, MORE SECURE and FASTER.

High Level Group Spot on

EUROPEAN COMMISSION - High Level Group of Independent Stakeholders on Administrative Burdens

exerpts from OPINION OF THE HIGH LEVEL GROUP

"The VAT Directive explicitly allows the use of electronic means for sending and archiving invoices. The rules however leave too many options to Member States so that national requirements for electronic invoices differ between Member States, which increases costs in case of cross-border transactions and makes e-invoicing less attractive. In particular, different rules regarding the authenticity of the invoice have been identified as one among several reasons why the overall market penetration of e-invoicing across the EU is still low. 
....... The estimate of the administrative burdens of the invoicing rules is EUR 43 bn. per year and the mid-term savings potential concerning electronic invoicing is estimated at EUR 18 bn. of these VAT-specific costs. .... reduction potential in terms of overall administrative costs is estimated at EUR 113 bn. .... Moreover, beyond the cost-cutting dimension, the use of electronic invoicing and its integration into IT supported business processes has a real potential to contribute to overall business competitiveness. 

...The HLG welcomes the Commission’s plan to reduce the administrative burden stemming from the current VAT rules on invoicing. The HLG believes that this area holds a significant reduction potential and that especially a higher uptake of
electronic invoicing by businesses would yield important savings for European businesses. It therefore calls upon the Commission to present an ambitious legislative proposal removing unnecessary obligations in this area and enabling enterprises throughout Europe to make maximum use of the savings potential presented mainly by electronic invoicing and electronic archiving.

The guiding principle should be the equal treatment of paper and electronic invoices whilst encouraging enterprises to use electronic invoicing. For this reason, the HLG calls upon the Commission
and the Member States to eliminate requirements specifically imposed on electronic invoicing and electronic archiving which may hinder the uptake of these technologies and prevent the realisation of significant cost savings. In any instance, the equal treatment of paper and e-invoices should not lead to new requirements for paper invoices that are more burdensome than the current ones.

Brussels, 22 October 2008"

Now it is time to brush aside unfounded fears and take the easy way - the only way. Anything else would:

1. fail to give SMEs much so much needed relief and

2. seriously delay the development in the presently most important single market step

3. fail to use the mass market learning aspect an easy migration would be

Happy Confluence

As we heard from Stig Korsgaard at SIBOS there a rather unique happy confluence has been arrived at as:

1. The EC Expert Group on e-Invoicing turned to UNCEFACT to get a global e-invoicing standard to use in EU - the obvious targets being to speed up adoption, cost-efficient integration and automation and at the same time further the Single Market.

2. UNCEFACT TBG1 - representing trade and industry has delivered Cross Industry Invoice Version 2. It has been vetted also in the Expert Group and found very satisfactory. User guidelines should be ready by yearend.

3. UNCEFACT TBG5 representing the finance sector has worked in the payment automation towards ISO20022 and are natural supporters of CII in their own e-invoicing services and pan-EU schemes. This will mean that invoices keyed in by SMEs soon should be in this format from the start. SME software and accounting services should for obvious cost-saving and value  production reasons follow suit.

4. The PEPPOL project (public sector procurement EU pilot) will accept CII invoices once in place (not only UBL).

CII as a network standard opens means a new dimension of the single European market. If you are an enterprise receiving invoices from 27 member states many of them will from the outset be in the right format and the rest will have been converted to CII as the network format. So you only need to decide for how long you want to convert it to your local format... or just pay it conveniently.

THIS IS AN OPPORTUNITY ON A GRAND SCALE. I do not think that anybody has the nerve to wreck it - but much work is still needed to make clear that unstructured invoicing (destructed information..) has NO FUTURE.

We also heard at SIBOS from Ken Isaacson from NY Fed that the payment reference is being implemented and that feeding will be both to EDI and XML (ISO20022). Both needed for automation and global interoperability.

e-invoicing transactions taking off

The shape of this curve reminds me of the development of e-banking transactions back in the 80s - first you sign up the customers - then you have to wait, and then wait, and wait - and then it takes off like a rocket - viral marketing works this way ´- and in the e-invoicing case naturally the deadlines for paper or e-mail set up by many large invoice receivers and transparent charging for having to send paper.

As a result of these action we can already register that Tieto in Finland has passed a penetration of 70%, City of Helsinki around 65% and City or Tampere around 55%. Soon it will be close to 100%.  Municipalities are important as they have responsibility both for tax payers money and furthering of the networked  e-society in important dimensions .

 

Typical e-invoicing transaction trend in Finland

Public-private partnerships II - just words?

Another area where public-private partnership at some point may have had challenges is e-invoicing. Some have seen a danger that the PEPPOL-pilot for public sector procurement in EU will lead to the public sector only accepting e-invoices in the UBL-format - at the same time as UNCEFACT/TBG1 is finalizing the user guidelines for Cross Industry Invoice V2 intented for generic b2b use.

This should not be a risk as the PEPPOL project started off before CII V2 was around - but has evaluated CIIv2 and seen that it delivers what public sector invoicing is needing.

It would of course be rather grotesque is the public sector would only accept their own e-invoicing format. It would again slow down adoption - only benefit e-invoicing service providers reformatting business. Same effect as mandatory digital signatures have had.

Public-private partnerships I - just words?

We are seeing a growing realization that there is no public sector - or private sector for that part - from a citizens point of view -  only services produced somewhere (even if they are subject to policy making and regulation from the public sector - really important task that should not be disturbed by service production). The all-important thing is that the "offering" should not be a stand-alone product or narrow service - but the compilation of elements from relevant providers relevant to this particular everyday practise of a citizen-customer. And the rule should be to always let the user use tools he is already used to - not be highjacked by technology.

As often progress can start from very simple epiphanies. One example is the provision of strong e-id as a service from the banking sector to state and municipalities by letting users log in with familiar e-banking credentials. This is now quite a success story in several countries and tax payers' money is being saved big time.

On the road to this I came across some experience I hope will not be had elsewhere:

- the public sector wanted to create their own tool - a plastic card (apart from big cost to no avail - a form factor that will disappear and become feature in mobile phones)

- all of them did not at first welcome the idea that it was offered as a service - even if banks are well placed as a part of the defence against money laundering and being subject to regulation

- then it was - inevitably - approved as the equally secure, but much cheaper and hands-down preferred-by-citizens alternative to the plastic card

- but it was still not warmly welcomed - all sorts of arguments were heard why the state should issue its own plastic that might become the only one accepted later

Any civil servant today in front of this question will surely ask some simple questions based on our Nordic experience:

1. what do users prefer?

2. can I speed up digitalization by letting citizens use familiar, secure and trusted tools?

3. can I save tax payers money?

The answers are obvious and when acted upon - then public-private partnership for this part is not just words.

New terminology in financial services

BULL MARKET

A random market movement causing an investor to mistake himself for a financial genius.

BEAR MARKET

Another random market movement causing months where the children get no allowance, the wife gets no jewellery, and the husband gets no sex.

VALUE INVESTING

The art of buying low and selling lower.

P/E RATIO

The percentage of investors wetting their pants as the market keeps crashing.

BROKER

How much broker my broker has made me.

STANDARD & POOR

Your life in a nutshell.

STOCK ANALYST

The idiot who just downgraded your stock.

STOCK SPLIT

When your ex-wife and her lawyer split your assets equally between themselves.

FINANCIAL PLANNER

A guy whose phone has been disconnected.

MARKET CORRECTION

The day after you buy stocks.

CASH FLOW

The movement your money makes as it disappears down the toilet.

PROFIT

An archaic word no longer in use.

AaaS

AaaS - Advertising as a Service is not a service like Saas (Software as a Service) - it is a mindset whose time has come. Consumers are increasingly aware of the fact that they in fact pay the cost of advertising themselves - and that is one more reason why anything intruding, tasteless, meaningless  or expensive may turn them against the message.

Advertising has very deep roots in traditional media and has not yet properly adopted the interactive Internet as a tool to make advertising a useful - and at best fun - advertisement as a service.

Don Schultz - guru on integrated marketing - spoke in Helsinki how brandbuilding has changed and Timo Lehtinen (CEO 121) summarized in their magazine:

- in the past marketers believed that they did build and maintain brands

- they positioned the brand in the mind of consumers and maintained and controlled it in the market - only they had the right to do it

- BUT when all marketers did the same consumers got increasingly fed up with the market noise and started to shun brand messaging

- brand experience started to appear outside their control - in Internet sites, technical support, retail shops, sales contacts, user communities, blogs and recommendation networks

- now brand building has permanently moved from one way to multilateral and brand experience is born in brandcontacts

- brandcontacts are not generated when messages are sent - but when they are received and reacted upon

- winners will be those mastering ROMI - measuring the efficiency and reacting on it

This surely corresponds to my beliefs. The next question is how you -  on the net -can equip your customers with simple-to-use tools where they can describe the reality they live in with a limited enough number of choices. ZEF  is a forerunner here. And once the recommendations show up - easy tools for see2buy2pay or registering for contacting.

54 billion € - too much or not enough?

Deutsche Bank Research report came out with this cost saving figure - referring to research at Hanover University. Is it too much - or not enough? The answer is yes...

1. If you only think about cost savings achieved with dematerialization of paper (30 billion invoices and envelopes on EU level a year..) and saving stamps  the estimate looks far too high.

2. But if you look further into payment automation and supply chain automation savings it is well in line with earlier estimates.

3. If you add the logical next steps enabled - automated accounting, automated invoice financing it is already on the low side.

4. If you add lower fraud risks, more efficient VAT auditing, lower credit risks/insurance costs via more frequent "next-to-no-cost-invoicing" it is of course far from enough.

So it is of course only a question of where you draw the line. Those clinging to the past - perhaps believing that manual invoicing have some sort of future - want to draw the line next to the stamp costs. Those who see this as the next step on a ladder to wide cross-market and cross-process digitalization have no doubt - this is only the beginning.

Innovation - automating accounting for 20m EU enterprises..

The EC drive to reduce administrative costs by 25% in SMEs by 2012 is surely worth all support - especially as SMEs represent 63% of turnover. But it is not possible to achieve this goal without moving resolutely into the accounting area - reporting to autorities can be streamlined with the same tools.

We now see a quite clear road to how this - and more can be achieved - based on the VAT directive proposal where enterprises with turnover up to 2m (20m+) are encouraged to move to cash-based accounting and structured equal treatment e-invoicing - not loaded down with legal demands for digital signatures - not put on much less secure paper/simple PDF invoicing.

The Nordic step-by-step approach is the following:

1. e-banking - enabled cutting bank's combined costs in for example Finland in half (bank's costs = customers costs - every cent). Now every enterprise benefit from the services and automation with electronic account statement.

2. migration to e-invoicing - most enterprises signed up - usage now taking off as inceasing number of invoice receivers (national, multinational, public sector) accept only structured invoices and invoice senders are starting to charge transparently for more expensive paper invoices.

This migration is opening up several other valuecreating tools - like generic (not partnerspecific!)  e-rfp, e-offer, e-order, e-confirmation tools in the procurement value chains and financing and now also in the accounting area.

3. the next mass market step is automated accounting. This is especially easy to acieve in cash-based accounting and goes like this:

(i) service provider (often bank) stores copy of e-invoice before passing it on to receiver

(ii) when payment is received the account statement acts as receipt (no additional documents needed) and the invoice in question is attached to it - that is ALL YOU NEED - accounting is totally automated (should be massive incentive to only use e-invoicing).

By-products:

- account statement and attached paid invoices can be sent to accounting service for end-of-year closing books and storage

- VAT auditing becomes orders of magnitude easier

- cash flow estimates can be created automatically by the bank or other service provider - in real time

-  financing can be obtained next-to-automatically with duplicate of invoice sent to receiver for approval and finance company and then automatically entered into accounting

This is not difficult - but we all need to work hard to help EU and other stakeholders to get the message through. One could expect enterprise organisation and chambers of commerce to take a more proactive - but also technology neutral role. Keeping it simple is particularly important in these halycon days of new-technology and attention-fragmenting information avalanches.

Web squared

Interesting paper by Tim O'Reilly and John Batelle titled web squared.

Starts out by describing how the Web 2.0  "network as a platform" enables applications that get better the more people use them with network effects acquiring users - then learning from them and building on their contributions. Web 2.0 is all about "harnessing collective intelligence" - managing, understanding and responding to massive amounts of user-generated data in real time.

Then goes on to observe that collective intelligence applications are no longer being driven solely by humans typing on keyboards - but, increasingly, also by sensors. Phones and cameras are mentioned as eyes and ears for applications and motion and location sensors. Much more data is being collected, presented and acted upon in real time.

Those who have the ability to interpret and react commercially on this exponentially growing opportunity - more data, richer data, real time data - stand to benefit big time. The borderline between reacting on the data and presciently reading results out of it is probably getting blurred. Here the future is not necessarily clearest in the announcements of big companies - but in the fast and clever actions by small players - early adopters and alpha geeks.

This all is not unexpected - Web 2.0 did not become Web 3.0 - but Web squared - described here as not the Semantic Web, tnot he Social web, not the Mobile Web, not a Virtual Reality - but all of it and more.

The importance at this stage of mobile phones should not be surprising either - they have - compared to PCs -  the advantages of being personal, with the users all the time, linked to the net all the time, affordable, having 3 times more users - and now also the capability to act as mobile and omnipresent sensors - adding exponentially to the data stream (naturally controlled by the users).

It works in practise - BUT does it work in theory?

This was the famous statement - allegedly by Chrusjtjov viewing a combined harvester demo at a sovhos.

It came to my mind when reading the often so eminent Economist - now the "Modern Economy Theory" July 18th article. Without going into any interesting detail  on this or on the rebutting views by Robert Lucas (Aug 6th) I think that we have ample evidence from past runs that most markets - especially financial ones - from time to time lose their sense.  Run hysterically high - only to fall into total depression - hardly any price is low enough and hardly any partner strong enough. There are many - almost too obvious - levers driving things exponentially in either direction - in the free fall phase destroying value for shareholders and taxpayers on an astronomical scale. Should it not now be clear that:

1. Mark to market is an absolute must for trading. It should not be necessary to say that trading is a very important activitity - but that position sizes should be restricted to capital deployed. The value of widespread liquidity created by trading can hardly be overstated - even if it disappears in crisis situations.

2. No mandatory mark to market for loans - irrespective of instrument used. We have seen examples of how investment-banking-encouraged and regulator-adopted mark to market practises have destroyed banks on a large scale - tax payers lose big time in the fire sales - and smart actors pick up spoils.

3. Disappearance of liquidity phenomenas should be an assumption - and investment portfolio carriers should have a much larger part of their funding assured than has been the case before.

Building theories is fascinating and useful - but we should not blame theorists for not foreseeing also-before-by-practioners-seen consequences of overheated markets. Incentive systems are sometimes leeding to even faster value destruction and begs the question if analysts are up to speed - or who they serve by - too frequently -  not looking beyond the next quarter.

Join the cause

Join the e-invoicing cause - and recruite your Facebook friends. The more we cross-communicate in new channels - the faster we get this good-for-all thing happening.

Dream scenario for VAT auditing

Making life easier and work more productive for SMEs in EU is a central goal for EU and most member states. More productive SMEs means more productive large enterprises and lower cost for the public sector (equals lower tax pressure and thus again better productivity and competitive position - less inclination towards protectionism).

Now there is a clear opportunity for a mega-step. It goes as follows:

1. Out of the 24 m enterprises 98-99% are microclass (less the 10 employees - almost half of them have only one employee).

2. Most of these could and should move to cash-based accounting (CBA) - as EU and many member states encourage. Simplified accounting saves cost from the outset and lowers stress levels.

3. CBA opens up an opportunity to automate it all by linking payments in electronic bank account statements with sent and received e-invoices. This saves money on a huge scale - most likely in the Deutsche Bank study that promises 54bn in Germany.

4. Tax authorities are rightly worried about VAT fraud - big leakage is a risk in paper and e-mail based invoicing.

5. e-invoicing is in itself a clear improvement - but some member states have not followed the equal treatment principle and made e-invoicing more complex with mandatory qualified digital signatures - thus raised the threshold and costs to migrate to safer and more productive invoicing practises.

6. Automated accounting in the CBA sector would clearly shrink the space for VAT fraud and make auditing less needed, easier and less costly as (i) SMEs have an additional big incentive to digitalize invoicing, (ii) payments are linked to the e-invoice, (iii) cost-efficient and secure storage is already offered by professional service providers, (iv) corresponding sent/received and paid invoices can be found in the counterparts digital environment, (v) auditing can be automated, (vi) VAT payments and reporting can move to real time..

Enough reasons to take real action for sure. Is it happening in your country? Are tax authorities simplifying things? Are your enterprise organizations pressing for it? Doing something real for massive cost savings? Or just complaining and lobbying for nitty-gritty or clinging-to-the-past practises??? We - in the Real Time Economy program - are working hard on making this next dimension of e-invoicing real.

The blogosphere and social media at large should prove their power by adopting this kind of issues with quite some gusto. Please feel free to kick the ball forward.

54 Billion reasons in Germany..

From Deutsche Bank report:

“the bulk of the companies [SMEs in Germany] squander the sizeable efficiency

gains that come with the introduction of digital invoices. According to

estimates by researchers at the University of Hannover, the German

economy offers total cost-savings potential of around EUR 54 bn,

mainly in more efficient processes, i.e. in the immediate further processing

of invoice data in company bookkeeping and controlling

systems. Why don’t more companies make use of digital invoicing?"

 

Compelling enough?  Time for action!

Global attention for interoperable e-invoicing

Potentially useful repository in Business Week.The Real Time Economy Community site is still second to none.

Co-regulation time

I wrote this blog post back in 2007 and keep coming back to the theme rather often. As said there - business should morally embrace the need for regulation - it cannot be avoided - be it the environment, health business, financial engineering etc.Resisting it is a sure way for making it worse - joining forces with the democratic institutions gives a fair chance to make it better.

Of course it is better when things can happen without regulation - but in today's hypercompetion both for customer attention and for shareholder commitment there is less space than before to get the good-for-society-at-large and longer term business enhancing investments in common networks, rulebooks, necessary voluntary restrictions and standards happen.

Quarterly capitalism frequently dries up investments and is too often destroying value - at least for customers longer term shareholders and  customers. Is it really in the interest of society and business to continue to focus on possible short term shareholder value? 10 months ownership is not the one to be rewarded. Incentive programs for management should serve the long term view - not value destruction

Paying for paper

The migration from the old habit of de-electronizing invoices by printing them on paper - and thereby loosing much of the valuable information - and causing a lot of cost for re-electronizing what is left of it - is gathering speed in many ways. Some examples:

- invoice receivers both nationally and multinationally are setting deadlines for paper or unstructered PDFs (really important to get all-to-all concepts and standards in place fast - to avoid fragmentation)

- invoice senders are charging consumers for paper - they have of course paid for them before - but now when it becomes visible the consumers are motivated to act in their own interest (help the service provider to cut cost)

- b2b invoice senders have also started to charge for paper invoices - recent example Shell (3€) and TeliaSonera (5€). What could be more natural and just for all- and more beneficial for the receiver who will not only avoid the hidden cost but also save in the region of 15-25€ per transaction.

These "negative carrots" are certainly needed to help the corporate mass market to derive the massive benefits from lower cost, faster payment, smaller credit risks and cheaper financing faster and move to the next step - automated and real time accounting.

Banking is easy..

• You just accept deposits and make loans with high margins.
• If you are a start-up bank you just pay more for the deposits and then place the money in high-earning but still quite secure loans and interesting new papers some call hybrids.
• If you think this is risky you just place the money in a good number of papers - all will not go bankrupt - at least not at the same time.
• Heavy advertising and marketing is a sure way to build image, brand and trust. Unfortunately it is expensive so volume growth has to be quadrupled - which is easy.
• Simple solutions make you look simple so it is important to make the "products" at least appear extra complicated.
• Triple A papers are totally secure - even for perpetual loans - but really boring and lowyielding - so do not recommend it to your investment customers.
• Payment service is boring and should be left as basic as possible.
• Regulators are stupid and political enemies - give them a finger and they will not only take your hand but the whole body. Keep them at bay with all possible methods.

Just follow these rules and you cannot avoid getting rich..

It is not the invoice...

Slap any number of digital signatures on an electronic invoice and still you cannot guarantee any integrity and authenticity. The legal harmonization debate in EU is unfortunately still wrongly focusing on this one document.

The answer is in the holistic business process - when the (any form of) invoice has arrived and VAT auditors understandably from time to time want to check that less and less fraud is taking place (which will happen with migration to the e-version) - the supporting elements like order, delivery and payment documents related to it need to be checked. As simple as that - as well documented in the Code of Practise adopted by the EC Expert Group on e-Invoicing.

Additional supplementary tools will be used by some enterprises to improve processes - but technology neutrality should be the base for the much needed pan-EU harmonization.

Factories $16.3billion - IT $1.1 trillion

Services took over from manufacturing of goods already in 1987.

Measured by jobs: some 30% of US jobs where in manufacturing in 1975 - it is now only 10% - and actually on 5% manufacture products.

Measured by investments in 2004: new factories $16.3 bn - investment in IT $1.1 trn. Server farms and mainframes are the new industrial complex!

My question is if those who decide to keep traditional manufacturing going at high cost to tax payers - have realized the magnitude of the change.

Want to save 1 billion litres of gasoline?

Well that is easy - just ask the average European to act so that 2 litres less is used - a year. Should not be difficult - and one could in the same go throw in other fossile fuels and CO2 generation (80% of energy being fossile based in the world) - again not meaning much to the average person.

But that is also the dilemma - as so little money and CO2 is saved per person or per SME.  "My contribution is so small - I might as well go on as before..." And when almost everyone is reasoning in this way nothing is achieved.

As our challenges are so serious and cannot be solved without virtually everyone changing their behavior it should be very obvious that we now need resolute leadership. We cannot afford powerplay with populism or empty political promises - we can only afford clear powerful messages and easily impopular acts to achieve real changes in the mass markets. Clinging to the past has never been a good strategy anyway.

Listening - just now - to Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt speaking at Almedal I feel that at least he is very clear - basically promising blood, sweat and tears - but also potential for new economic growth - on the road to a sustainable environment policy. Sweden has a lot on on their EU Presidency plate. Let us hope that their efforts will be brave and widely supported.

Illiterates in Sweden

The Swedish IT-association estimates that some 2 million Swedes are not part of the IT-based society. One million of these are said to be more or less IT-illiterate. That is well above 10% and not acceptable as so much of public and private services have moved to the net.

As a step to mitigate the problem an education package has been created. Annika Bergman CEO states that the progress must happen step by step - starting from the simple.

What about your country? More illiterates? Even more reason for education packages?

See beyond the core

Many enterprises have seen that focusing only on the core may be detrimental as there are few examples that this has created innovation based growth.

This does not mean that routine tasks, that can be outsourced, should not increasingly be. Outsourcing has been an early and is in the context of the networked economy an even more natural step. Once done it should for its part free up management to look for growth and game-changing innovations at the edges of the core. Sometimes it however seems that more and more attention is focused on less and less. This may lead to loss of very natural near-field businesses to others who later can use this as a bridgehead when attacking the core.

The challenge is that the corporation is not really organized for growth by change (innovation) - but for execution, control and problemsolving - further driven by sometimes value-destroying short-sighted quarterly capitalism. Real quotes from real companies:

" Our innovation process turns BIG ideas into small ones:"

" We are beyond risk aware."

" Of course we thought of it. We just didn't do anything with it."

" We are so smart individually, but so dumb collectively."

Will the right balance be found - between focused management and earliest possible exploration of how the radical changes in the socio-technical landscape at the edges of the core should become growth engines? The jury is still out in many corporates.

Game-changing Innovation

" The role of the innovator is to meet customers on their terms as human beings.The goal of the innovator is to empower your customers to realize the change they want to see in the world."

Paco Underhill

I like the statement - especially "on terms as human beings" - which I interpret as holistic but simple answers to practises in  their everyday contexts. But with some reservation - as customers rather seldom have asked for the change they afterwards liked so much. Maybe it should say "help your customer to understand that they want change"..

As consumers mostly ask for incremental improvements and do not know what radically different might be offered, there is a danger - especially during recessions -  that game-changing innovation is not getting enough resources - except in exceptional companies.

Decisionmaking in the ordinary company is a challenge as architectural and discontinuos - game changing innovations are easier to kill (running against business models, ROI potential - if big - uncertain) and harder to conceive as they are often found at the margins of core business and may need discovery-oriented activities.

Still they are the way to the future - but business lines have to co-operate, companies have to network and public private partnerships become the norm,  if we want to be competitive and keep the base for welfare solid.

Authenticity and integrity - give me a break

The target for the EU Commission is to cut the costs of SMEs caused by complicating legislation with 25% before 2012. As SMEs generate 60- 70% of all turnover in EU, this is the obvious thing to do to improve competitiveness.

The most important productivity area to address is now fast and easy migration from inefficient and sometimes insecure paper and e-mail and this is also where administrative burdens should be lowered - not increased. DG Taxud has launched a VAT-directive aiming at just that. The EU Expert Group on e-Invoicing is naturally asking for and supporting the equal treatment of paper and e-invoicing and other simplifying harmonization suggested.

But the debate goes on - authenticity and integrity has been lifted up to a mystic level - and few legislators or even business organization representatives seem to have the guts to say that they do not really understand what this is all about - even if the emperor looks quite naked.

The only way to solve this is to think small. Take the case of a micro-enterprise receiving most invoices in paper envelopes, some from other SMEs in e-mail and increasingly being asked by his possible accounting service and invoicing partners to accept real e-invoices (in structured form) to automate accounting and procurement processes. How can he say that he is receiving authentic invoices and integral invoices to VAT auditors? Well, by checking that it corresponds to the order he made - on the phone maybe - and that it seems to come from the right sender and then pay it to agreed account.

Should there be any additional mandatory regulation if the invoice is electronic? Certainly not - rather the other way around - especially when invoices arrive through managed networks and directly to the e-banking service. And the same goes when asked to send e-invoices. It is close to absurd try to cut burdens for SMEs and at the same time make it mandatory for them to digitally sign e-invoices.

The simple fact is that transport is irrelevant and that the same simple technology neutral procedures should apply for all invoices sent, received, paid and filed. Anything else will subsidize the least cost efficient and least secure old way.

If integrity and authenticity is difficult to understand - think small - then it is easy. Legislators in fact have the this duty - to understand the effects on SMEs - before legislating.

Are we that different?

Read column by Joakim de Leeuw - innovation manager at SEB in Sweden.

Reflections:

Digital natives and digital immigrants are said to be virtually different races. As a rapidly growing proportion of customers and employees are born into the digital world it is important to understand the possibly even fundamental difference.

How different are we? 

It is true that us immigrants have a need for metaphoras to make the digital world more tangible. We store documents in files in digital cupboards. If the document is needed in several places we copy it and store in several files. This does not make sense according to the natives - the information is all over the place - just tag it and search!

Another metaphor is the e-mail - a lettermetaphor for communicating. This does not make sense according to the natives - do not send - publish instead!

There are many more - but this is not new of course - the first car was called a horseless waggon, e-banks were designed as bank branches etc. And maybe it is just the necessary way to make the immigrants move on.

May be we are that different - and it is not a question of technology - but of culture..