If you want to go fast – go alone – if you want go far go together

On the way back from a big and very successful EU-conference on e-Invoicing in Madrid.

What did become clear – again - was that migration to e-invoicing will not happen without large scale collaboration. This goes for areas like legal deregulation, standardization, network building. Bur above all in spreading the message of how much can be gained in enterprise productivity, saving tax payer’s money, significant CO2 saving and rule of law once the invoice data is sent in structured form.

You can of course go fast by doing it alone – but missing the network effect and having to create the market on your own means that you cannot go very far.

The EC Expert Group report was extensively discussed – and I think it can be said that the report – together with the consultation results and the discussions now is the end of the beginning.

The next phase is the beginning of the end. Now that all the ingredients are in place – equal treatment, ISOstandard built on CII and above all awareness of electronic incoicing being such a fundamental fundament – it is time to put all in missing smaller pieces in place and migrate.