To Real Time Economy with e-invoicing

Teemu Arina was kind enough to record my presentation. May make more sense once I get the presentation enclosed - pls ask for it in the meantime.

You can find the recording here.

Socio-technical landscape

 

 

Open innovation is the way forward – as so many speakers at this CKIR-conference are saying.

We should be promoting common-sensical solutions for sense-making business. Are we? Maybe not… at least not often enough. The socio-technical landscape has changed so fast and we are still prisoners of quarterly capitalism (trying to create value for shareholders now staying for an average of 10 months), corporate governance models from the pre-networked age and isolated public sector services not systematically integrating themselves into private sector services and vice versa etc:

1. We seem to believe that we can see around the corner and we keep honing this imaginative skill. Technology is not the narrow sector – it is the attention of the potential end-user. We need small fast steps to get around the corner and then continue with new insight to the next corner.
   
2. We seem to have too many enterprises digging themselves deeper into vertical holes – forgetting too often that they are not alone with their customers in this world and that the end-users contexts are changing and new e-native users are stepping in with radically different expectations. Fragmentation of time and technology is a fact. Technology allows "anything" – end-users do not have the time to get acquainted with the new and have to de-choose more than ever before. If sense of urgency in actually providing customer value has moved into a sense of emergency – to deliver something – anything – then there is a clear need to change direction.
   
3. We seem to continue to move into more vertical solutions and deeper vertical solutions, when it is clear that better value for customers are delivered by horizontal solutions – those that work in the same way with all partners in all directions. There is of course space for further procurement-driven value chain building – but it should happen increasingly with generic tools.
   
4. We talk about end-user centricity – but we do not intensively enough focus on the driving wheels when it comes to the only critically important element in innovations – the critical mass of potential users taking their step (if that does not happen – all money and time spent has been lost – at least for the moment. But it is not the money lost that hurts most – it is the "ice-age" that usually follows – no further investments, no fine-tuning, no learning from mistake as those involved move elsewhere (opportunity to make same mistakes again – instead of learning from them). Which are then the wheels that have the traction needed?
   

   
    

   Wheel 1: Clinical simplicity in design, functionality and communication of user interface and tools.
   

   Wheel 2: Reuse tools that citizens already have – are using frequently and trust – create economy of repetition, economy of scope and economy of re-use.
   

   Wheel 3: Understanding the everyday practices of end-users – what all is needed to make a service complete and completed in real time.
   

   Wheel 4: Omnipresent devices create the critical mass faster – promote mobile phones (today really multimedia computers) for all information and interaction
   

   
    

Please feel free to add wheels…

work1. Remember to network - examples from e-banking

Starting to go deeper into the list below, I recall the earliest networking experience from e-banking - dating back to 1984 (private e-banking was launched in 1982 - corporate in 1979 in Union Bank of Finland - now Nordea Bank). In those days PCs were not that widely in use at home and modems even less common. So the bank agreed with employers that it is in everybody's interest (time saved) when employees who use PCs at work (usually linked to external telenetworks) could use them also for their private e-banking. This networking led to a very much faster uptake and customer value than would otherwise have been possible and created an early e-habit and e-trust platform that now is the base for a worldleading position for example in the public sector (reuse of e-banking tools).

The next networking example from the e-banking history came 1992 when customers could log in to the bank and continue to all major insurance companies - big savings for them as they did not need to build own strong identification. This meant that banking became embedded in insurance services and vice versa.

This reuse of bank e-id (also for signing third party contracts as is the case with loan agreements in the banks' services) took a big step forward when the Finnish Ministry of Finance in 2002 recommended the use or bank-id for the public sector as an equally strong method as the state issued PKI smart card (which has failed to gain usage). Estonia in 2005 is an even more striking example of what citizens prefer: 363 000 Estonians used e-banking id (800 000 have them) when filing tax return - 904 used the state issued smart card (1 000 000 distributed). This use of bank-id has probably taken Estonia's tax service and public sector at large to a global lead position.

Accenture's High Performance in Government report (p35 figure7) shows the results of the co-operation with the banking sector - Finnish citizens are very clear global leaders in eGovernment use and eGovernment enthusiasm. Of course it is easy to understand - what could be more conveniant than reuse of bank-id which is so often used and familiar (one-time codes since 1982)? True economy of repetition for the citizen, economy of reuse for the government (massive investment if all citizens would have to be equipped with smart cards and card readers - and a waste as single sector tools will not be used - and ties to one PC, does not work on mobiles etc) and economy of scope and scale for all. Accenture did not quite pick this up but cited some for me unknown anonymous press coverage that would have questioned the role of banks - ie questioning networking..

I could list a good number of similar networking examples from e-banking - payments-integrated e-invoicing is the most recent example - the cost saving potential from e-invoicing for EU has been estimated (by EU) to exceed 100bn€ per year - something REAL for Lisbon.

The leading theme is of course to understand how the citizen's practice of handling all aspects of banking can so very naturally become an essential part of his practice in using for example public sector services. Responsible civil servants are of course taking every opportunity to save tax payers' money - but also to make it possible for them to benefit early from e-services without any need to invest in or learn to use new devices. This service of practices is very much connecting to what Oskar states in his Practice Design blog. "This helps companies to bec0me less fragmented in the operations. Customers are very different, whereas practices can in many cases be universal." In this particular case cross-organisations and both for the citizen's private and employee role in a world-leading private-public partnership.

More examples later.