Discover the Benefits of Using a DHL Invoice Sample for Facilities

Dhl invoice sample for Facilities

hello ladies and gentlemen and a very warm welcome to today's webinar which is brought to you by shared services link and sponsored by tradeshift today we're looking at how to manage e invoicing globally and I'm very excited about this webinar that we've got today as it's looking specifically at the DHL story so looking at who's joining me today for um our speaker lineup my name is Susie West I'm the founder and CEO at Shar Services link and we're being joined by Steven velt who is program manager uh at Global Business Services finance and HR in Europe for DHL we're also being joined by E invoicing expert velle Patel who's senior marketing manager and Industry Solutions at tradeshift and his colleague Mark mcy who's senior solution consultant at trade shift so you've got a very expert panel today of course as ever you have a significant role to play in as as far as what you get out of this next hour which is to make sure that you have your Qui questions answered so uh please do submit your questions to me there's a a box in which you just need to type your questions and submit those to me and I will put those to our panelists in the last 10 minutes of this webinar let's have have a look at the agenda for this uh session so I'll be touching on the intention of this session and then swiftly handing over to our first guest speaker and that's Steven from DHL and uh then we'll be looking to have a demo and a summary from trade shift and then looking to take your questions towards the end of the session looking at the intention of this session many shared services organizations are now moving to a global construct and um although some are specifically focusing on finance uh and finance shed Services many are moving to uh a global Business Services model so looking to Encompass a single structure and a single approach and a single vision for their Shar Services organization across Finance HR it procurement and Commercial and uh this is very much the the um the construct that DHL has started the journey on and so Within These constructs these Global constructs um a lot of Shar Services organizations are looking to deploy technology that can indeed be implemented in a global Pro on a global scale uh so rather than looking for uh Regional programs looking for very much a global program so it's great to have DHL giving us their view on how they' be looking to roll out or are indeed rolling out electronic invoicing on a global basis so we'll be examining how DHL is indeed doing this and how they're rolling it out in three phases now just before I introduce our first guest speaker I do have three back-to-back polls that I would like to ask you please just to get a a read of who we've got on the line in terms of um maturity uh and uh kind of current adoption of electronic invoicing so let's start with our first of the three backs back Pooles which of the following do you actually use today please tick all that apply now if you're first timer on a shared services link webinar uh please be very aware that any of the polls that you actually uh participate in uh we we share the results immediately after so it's great benchmarking information for you so which of the following do you use today for uh processing your invoices are you actually using an e invoicing Network today do you use scanning or OCR or data capture technology do you use EDI in the mix do you receive um PDS which are emails to you from your suppliers or by your suppliers or do you actually use none of the above because you're actually operating a very manual environment today so 64% of you have responded we like to get this uh percentage over 70% closing the poll in three two one we were at 77% of you responding there let's have a look at the breakdown coming up on your screen now okay so uh a lot of you are still doing the emailed PDFs and receiving um invoices in an emailed PDF format um encouragingly a lot of you already using an e invoicing Network so 51% of you already using e invoicing today um 46% of you are using EDI possibly with your much higher volume suppliers um and 11% of you are not using any of the above um and uh obviously will get huge benefit from this session today okay so fairly encouraging results there I that really is what it tells us specifically looking at the adoption of e invoicing networks already that we've got a mature um a representation from a mature shared services organizations on the line today uh let's do the second of the the batbat polls where are you in your e invoicing Journey please take the one box that applies to you um we have been live with Ian voicing for well over 5 years we have been live with e invoicing for less than five years we are just about to go live we are evaluating in invoicing and we're in an RFP process and looking to implement Implement in the next 12 months we are looking to implement in the next 24 months we're at 52% of you responding please do cast your vote for me I'll be closing the poll shortly we're at 57% closing the poll ladies and gentlemen in three two one okay didn't quite get to 70% but not too far off there we're at 66% let's have a look at the results so 39% of you um say that you've been live with e invoicing for less than five years uh 14% uh over five years 9% uh you're just about to go live and so again uh you'll get some great um shortcuts from this session 22% are evaluating and looking to go live in the next 12 months and 16% in the next next 24 months okay coming up on your screen the final poll um for the back Tob backs and we've got uh a couple more polls at the end of this session so coming up on your screen how many invoices do you receive each year is it 100,000 or less 100,000 to quarter of a million a quarter of a million to half a million half a million to a million or is it over 1 million invoices that you receive from your suppliers your third party suppliers on an annual basis please take the one box that is appropriate to your situation 58% of you responding if you haven't already cast your vote please do so let's see if we can get it up near the 70% Mark closing the poll in three two one okay again let's get a read as to who we've got on the line what kind of peir group we're we're working with today so 65% of you responded it's a fairly even spread here which is quite interesting normally it's a bit more of a bell curve uh but we can see 42% of you I would say are operating a very high volume environment um with over receiving over half a million invoices or more per anom right thank you very much for all that data uh and with that I would now like to introduce our first guest speaker of today's webinar over to you stepen from DHL thank you Susie what uh I would like to share with you today is uh well how we are doing e enforcing and how we are bringing bringing it on to a global scale uh but I would like to start with giving you some background on what DHL is and how we have organized our shared services or environments um I'll give you some insight in in what we've done so far uh and what the challenges CH challenges are that we faced and still are facing um new requirements that we have identified whilst doing e invoicing and how we resolve that uh in terms of well trade shift uh and process for onboarding suppliers I'll share with you the results of uh well the campaigns that we' have been running since the beginning of this year and at the end I will hand over to uh trade shift persons on the call and they will give you some insight in the in in the platform they're offering maybe quick word on myself I've been uh working in the project and program management environment for the last 20 years uh initially mostly in the CRM environment the last 10 years more into Finance um I'm working sh service center in MWI of DHL um for the last 10 years approximately in different roles and lately focusing on projects or programs in the P2P area in terms of invoice automation ebing inbounds um and so onhl post DL we are German company headquartered in bone Germany part of the Dex 30 uh with a market capitalization of approximately 30 billion we are present and active in uh more than 220 countries which makes us one of the most globally organized uh companies with a revenue of approximately 55 billion and about almost half a million employees which also there makes us one of the largest employers in the world uh significant part of that is linked to the uh Dutch post the German German postal uh office um and that's basically the the motor comp company of of vhl now so in the 90s over the previous Century dut post started acquiring a number of companies like DHL Express like Excel supply chain like danzas and so on in order to build uh a Logistics Group um with now Tre next to the post division next uh three main divisions which is the DHL Express the global forwarding Freight and the supply chain division shared service center wise we I'm based in mass as I mentioned uh we've got two other ones one in San Jose to serve the and one in kalur to serve the uh Asia region and within Europe we have two other ones in one in Central Europe ostrava and one in Cologne for the German Market um in terms of uh shared service center strategy in Europe uh we still have activities in countries which mostly are related to the count receivables process we have the sh centas with as mentioned and we have the well satellites in in the Americas and in Asia for well reducing our costs um playing the W Arbitrage so in the accounting centers in the countries it's most linked to well proximity proximity to the chent customers things that require specific language skills or local knowledge and which involve significant interaction with uh with the local players in Mast um we focusing on more complex processes uh for which the countries in itself do not have the scale to build up a team uh we try to standardize and harmonize certain process that we transition into MWI um and by doing that we play the role of kind of transition Hub into the satellites in the Americas or in Asia where we focus on on cost and volume transactions processing and playing the W Arbitrage uh benefits a little bit more on the procur to pay organization it's about 500 fds um we're running on on on a large number of different erps as mentioned on the slide we running on sap Oracle JD Edwards and each of those in well different templates different instances etc etc which is still linked to a certain extent all the Acquisitions we did in the '90s and in the early 2000s years you're processing about one 10 million invoices uh per year and two million of those are DL Express and given the volume you're looking into ways to uh increase the efficiency of processing those invoices so well ebilling inbound this is one of them implementing processes like no no pay policies um are contributing to that as well shifting to uh e enforcing and what we've done so far um we started uh quite a number of years ago in 2007 with Well a different supplier a different partner than than trade shift um and focusing on the European scope at that moment and that resulted resulted now after approximately seven years in inovo well about depending on the months uh 12,000 to 15,000 invoices received via that platform um every month this is roughly um 30 to 35% of the supplier scope and the invoce volume scope um that we handed over to that partner um which is well below what we expected um as we will expect it to reach about 70% after two after two years which were the main challenges that we faced uh whil doing this um there was a lot of push back from suppliers um as they had to pay um in order to be allowed to send invoices to um to DHL which especially for the smaller supplier was a big uh big hurdle to take the bigger ones certainly if they had other customers on the same platform were willing to uh pick up that cost but the smaller ones had well a big issue with it as it was increasing their cost to send invoices significantly um the onboarding process was labor intensive uh for us and for the partner uh so there was an email campaign uh launched or an email being sent out after which followup calls were done by uh the partner but many of those were then referred back to us as uh they were not getting the well the decision from from our suppliers to uh to on board to them and so they reverted them back to us to convince or help convincing those suppliers to to on board onto eing um in terms of interoperability we had a number of suppliers that were sending out electronic invoices already however using different platform than the one we used to uh um have or the one that we were proposing to receive our invoices on our end on our end which made it uh often a very difficult discussion on on how to get the invoice from suppliers platform onto ours uh and into our books which will delayed many of the uh supplier integration significantly and uh lastly also we found out that in in some of the countries that were in our scope there was a limited Pres presence of that partner um as a consequence limited base of suppliers that well would quickly generates uh a base volume of invoices and a lengthy onboarding uh time to convince those suppliers to connect to well a platform that was new in that country or in that market all of that uh LED basically to the decision together with procurement um to go back to the markets and see whether that platform was still the best for DHL so we came up with a list of requirements which um had to take care of the issues we faced with the previous platform so we were looking for uh a partner with a better supplier on boarding methodology an open network uh also open to interoperability with other uh players in the market it should be as easy as possible for suppliers to connect and to send invoices and preferably also free for them in order to take away that that argument to do not start sending electronic invoices to us as we were in the meantime looking for Global solution uh Global coverage was very important for us and the platform needed or need to have some additional capabilities or functionalities we are sending back invoice statuses so in order to inform suppliers that um their invoice has been received has been approved has been paid and so on in order to reduce the load in our qu handling team as most of the questions we get there is exactly about status of their invoices we're looking into p flip functionality where we send po data onto trade shifts where suppliers can very quickly generate the invoice copying the data from the PO which is increasing significantly the quality of the invoice data that we receive and as a consequence also has huge benefit in the processing of the invoice on our ends we have implemented Dynamic validations which I'll get back to in one or two slides which is contributing to the data quality of the invoices as well by putting some validations on the platform um red using or and forcing suppliers to use the correct cost centers the correct po numbers and so on and it should as mentioned uh be appealing for well the large ones but also the smaller suppliers to uh send electronic invoices and there is a number of of ways to do that so we have for example a solution where supplers can upload PDFs and from there capture the data and submit them as electronic invoices into our systems a few words on on the trade shift solution uh trade shift one that tender um and well there's a few elements that um were triggering that decision uh they have a well a wide offering in terms of invoice electronic invoicing uh all the industry standard formats uh are accepted they have a wide range of of transfer protocols that can be used by suppliers to interface their invoice into the platform so it makes that technical burden as small as possible for suppliers to interact with us they're compliant in significant number of countries and and drawing uh so as we are looking into additional territories they will will try to follow that they have an open network supporting multiple languages and they're free for suppliers so suppliers don't have to pay to send invoices on the trade shift platform there's an onboarding app also uh which basically requires us to provide the vendor Master data of the vendors that we want to approach to convert into electronic invoicing um and we Define a campaign within that app that will depending on the behavior of the supplier to the emails he's receiving whether he's opening the email or not opening the email whether he's clicking on a link or not clicking on the link Etc take next actions by sending well depending on the behavior another email with more information or more guidance for the supplier to take them on to the next step uh that is proven to be working very successfully so far so these campaigns run fairly independently um without too much interaction from our team nor the trade shift team and suppliers are on boarding independently thirdly we have a business firewall on that platform which is basically containing validation rules there's a few static ones like the invoice date where we have restrictions of which dates can be used by suppliers so in our case it's no more than seven days before or after the current date there's also a few Dynamic ones like the PO data or cost center data for suppliers that have been identified as a PO supplier so there's should have po um the suppliers enforced to put a PO number and is also well the PO number he's entering is being validated against a list of open POS that we share with Trad shift um and if the supplier is putting a different number that is not on the open po list he will get notified that his invoice cannot be processed as it's not a valid PO number similarly for non-po vendors we have a validation on cost centers so only the active the valid cost centers can be entered by the suppliers and well through those validations the proing of the invoices on our side is is much more automated um on E invoice level rather compared to the paper invoices that are coming through fourthly Cloud scan is something I mentioned before um we do have the capability or spli do have the capability to uh to upload PDFs and these are converted them into data and they will go through the same validation rules as the ones I mentioned in point three um and well ensure that from the paper copies of those invo we still get high quality data into our system a few more words on the project scope that we negotiated with Trad shift uh went on boarding on this journey the initial exercise was focusing on Europe um with 1500 suppliers and approximately 850,000 invoices per year we are now shifting into phase two uh we within Europe we are adding more uh more suppliers more countries uh representing approximately 1.3 million invoices on top of that per year and then a phase three which will be for 2015 and onwards is another 1 million invoices per year uh this is the express business unit only uh and we are in discussing discussion with other um business units like Global foring business unit to also add more volume um well for the non-european countries onto the platform so these guys are on the platform for Europe uh and we try to well speak to them to uh to broaden that Geographic scope to the other regions as well when we invite suppliers to on board as said there is an email campaign triggered if they click on the link to initiate the onboarding process um they uh see the following screen which is a customized trade shift DL um screen with a personized uh letter from our uh senior manager introducing the solution uh what we want the supplier to do why we want him to do that what's in it for him and how we can uh on board what he needs to do and so all the proes that we will take him through to on board uh moving forward we see for suppliers that it's really easy exercise to do that on boarding uh it's very straightforward it's basically a few clicks that the uh needs to take in order to to make the connection from the invite is getting from us um and we expect through things like the PO flip which I mentioned before that that will uh increase even because then well we have all the data to him in the PO he just needs to click three four times and he's connected to us and his first invoice is uh returned from the PO into DL which is a really strong process to increase conversion of uh conversion of the of the suppliers into eing so how far did we get um until now so we we start the beginning of this year um we are live in in seven countries in Europe as at this moment we have a few more uh in campaign and in testing and we've kicked off uh Italy Switzerland and Portugal uh over the summer um some of these countries have converted up to 60% of their invoice volume already in in this year within well eight nine months and we see the invoice volume going through the platform increasing by depending on the month 20 to 30% and we see well now an acceleration even after the summer holiday uh that it's picking up a bit harder than well in the summer or just before um after this we'll we into into the European scope and as said as of 20145 we'll initiate a u a global deployment with Express to start with and a negotiation with the other uh business units within the HL like Global forwarding and so on in terms of of success as um well the the onboarding campaigns and the fact that they're running um in an automated way is bringing significant benefits to us because we have a relatively small team to coordinate the campaigns for all of the countries in scope and well we'll be adding more countries as we go Global so we see that the number of interactions we get uh from suppliers in response to the email campaigns is relatively low um and hence we can support many campaigns in parallel with a fairly small team um and there is hardly any questions uh from suppliers on how to onboard so it's it's a fairly simple exercise for them um in terms of conversion so I said we had, 1500 suppliers in scope um that we gave to trade shift in campaigns about 50% of them have been on boarded 3% have rejected uh because they didn't want to we are in discussion now with procurements on on a way on a strategy to see how well how hard we can play uh the exercise towards those suppliers and that depends on the supplier itself um so we are well aligning with procurement on on approaching those 3% and the remainder is still undecided as they go through the uh email campaigning exercise uh as we speak what worked really well uh in trade shifts um they have a concept which they offered us which is the CSM concept the customer success manager where basically they've assigned a a team to DHL to help us and together with them uh make this as successful as possible so they're focused on on DHL and we can share goals with them we will discuss any issues we have improvements we see or that we need um and secondly the easy and flexible way to uh allow suppliers to connect to to to trade shift assets especially for the small suppliers we see a big increase compared to the previous uh partner we had it's well really easy for suppliers we get that feedback on the platform uh already a few times from from those suppliers that it's surprisingly easy to connect um and secondly the white glove which is a side prodject from this C success manager basically we have identified uh an ongoing list rolling list of the main suppliers that we want to Ard and these are the high volume invoice uh suppliers that are very important for us to to get onto e invoicing because will be big benefit in doing so um and we have defined a list together with them of suppliers that we want to on board and they take ownership of that on boarding exercise as it's mainly the bigger ones they want to have the an EDI integration it's not always possible for them to do one of the standard EDI formats so trade shift through the white glove exercise uh supports and manage basically the onboarding of those uh top vendors towards us um and the only thing we need to do is sit in in uh status meetings and provide input but they manage that on our behalf which is uh a huge Improvement compared to the previous uh partner we had and um helping us a lot that is what I want to share with you today uh and I would like to hand over now to Vel of trade shifts over to you V thank you Stephen uh great story and thanks for sharing um I know from the trade side it's been really exciting working with the DHL team on this project um just before we get into the short demo of tradeshift I wanted to give you a brief overview um so Trad shift is a businessto business platform that enables companies all over the world to transact connect and collaborate we work with a number of global companies and have been very successful in onboarding many of their suppliers onto the platform in fact currently we have over 500,000 suppliers in over 100 countries on on the platform and the major reason that customers choose Trad shift is our Innovative approach and modern easyto use technology as you'll see from the demo in a minute um here is a a sample of some of our customers many of these are very large Global Enterprises like DHL uh Archer Daniels Midland is a fortune 27 Global Food Processor CBRE is the world's largest Commercial Real Estate Services firm and the NHS uh the world's largest publicly funded Health Service um so I've also included a sample of some of the suppliers that we work with um these are some large suppliers on our network but as with DHL we also cater to the needs of smaller suppliers as I mentioned so Trad shift is uh a platform that enables buyers and suppliers to transact connect collaborate from the very beginning our platform was really designed to be open flexible completely cloud-based and fully mobile and our network of buyers and suppliers is really at the core of of everything that we do um in order to provide a better idea I'll I'll use an example of iPhone when Apple introduced the iPhone it built certain core apps like email calendar messaging but they also enable third parties to build apps on top of the platform now currently there are 1.2 million apps on on available on the iPhone and that's a major reason why people want to use the iPhone so similarly Trad shift has built certain core apps like electronic invoicing Cloud scan collaborative workflow early Payment Solutions but we've also enabled third parties to build apps on top of the platform and add value to buyers and suppliers in addition to that our customers also have the opportunity to design their own apps and a good example is supplier registration one of our clients saw that after using trade shift they could easily automate the supplier registration process so together with them we designed a supplier registration app that is now available to everyone on the platform and one last piece I wanted to share is that Trad really takes a balanced approach to providing value to both suppliers and buyers with suppliers we really focus on ensuring that there's value for them from from the very beginning in addition to being free we offer multiple connectivity options great visibility into the AP process additional benefit benefits like accelerated payment and profile Pages for that's popular with with smaller suppliers for buyers we offer multiple capabilities from handling paper and PDF documents um as stepen mentioned to integrating with suppliers systems um and also to early payment capabilities train shift is interoperable with other networks um and one of the biggest value ads is that Trad can easily adapt and evolve to as your as your company's needs evolve so it really makes our solution future proof and trade shift naturally lends itself to Quick Integrations with Erp systems and and we are really obsessed with providing easy and intuitive Solutions so with that I'm going to hand it to Mark who's going to take you through a demo sounds good uh thanks the sh and so I want to go ahead and and go through you know four of the main points that we've been talking about uh especially with what we've done with DHL and in particular from the supplier side it's it's about creating that environment of collaborative e invoicing um really to be able to give that and and streamline the overall process of of processing these documents and and what we see here is uh our normal activity uh stream from A supplier side including communication from my buyer uh on this PO that we have in Q and so you know directly within the activity or even as I'm managing at the document level I have the capability to say you know yes we will process immediately and so both sides of this you're able to collaborate and resolve any discrepancies or issues or you know push the process forward uh within the platform itself rather than having to rely on email or phone calls or those types of things the other thing is that you know from within the uh application itself you have the ability to view these purchase orders and you know we talked about the increasing the quality of data so the ability to do an easy oneclick p flip that that takes that electronic information and flips it over into the invoice again to maintain the quality of the data that is uh brought over from the PO into the invoice so here we see all of that data that's brought over and we start to see some of that Dynamic validation that for these invoices there is this required order or PO number that again has been brought over as part of that process of the flip and again through review and being able to preview see that final invoice and what it's going to look like and ultimately be able to send it through the network to your buyer so the other aspect of kind of that collaborative nature is we talked a little bit about you know being able to get immediate in uh information about the statuses of your documents and so here on both sides of the buyer and supplier side we can see the status of my documents that are in my queue and if I flip over and look at it from the buyer side you'll also see that same view of being able to see not just the communications and what's going on uh with the documents but also what those statuses are so it's important that as you go through the statuses and as we look being able to create that next step of providing the dynamic workflow that you need to be able to process those documents as they go through so in this case we've always got to-dos I'm looking at it from a buyer's perspective and we see that there's number of different activities that I am required to do from escalations to approvals or even to be able to code the invoices that I have in Q and key here is the ability to tap into and tap into my existing GL codes that we pull over from our buyer system and again to be able to then select that information uh including any other cascading information as part of the workflow and once you are finished with that it being able to continue on that workflow for approval for escalation or for any other resolution as it goes through that process the third thing that I want to quickly look at is we talked a little bit about Cloud scan about the fact that a majority of invoices that may be coming into organizations are invoices that are either paper or in as an email attachment and so with Cloud scan what we're looking at here is we're looking at the supplier validation side of a submitting of an invoice via email and this is the actual email as we've scanned in through Cloud scan and one of the key things that you see is I I see that there is you know I'm logged in as the supplier I'm able to see my invoice that's gone through Cloud scan but in electronic form I see that there are some required fields that that you know dynamic validation logic that is required for doing business with this buyer and in particular the need to have a PO number so I see here that I need a PO number and it's not just if I go ahead and type in any number in this case the PO numbers from this buyer need to all start with 43 maybe it's a lookup against any open POS that we've pulled over from your Erp system but until I have put a valid Po in there it will not allow me to proceed on so we have a very robust means to be able to have that Dynamic validation logic regardless of whether the the the documents are coming in electronically whether they're being created within the system itself um or if they're coming through the process of what we're using with Cloud scan so with that um again just kind of want to quickly walk through the collaborative e invoicing how we can you know uh increase the quality of the data through a simple ability to do p flips how we can support the workflow and you know being able to do everything from GL coding to uh any other approval processes that you need as part of your AP process and then ultimately being able to help to translate and transfer a lot of that manual work that has to be done with either paper or PDF documents as part of email attachments into electronic format and getting to that point of true dynamic validation and the logic that you need to to to make sure that the documents that are coming in um are as valid as possible so with that I'm going to go ahead and hand it back over to Susie and uh thank you for your time thank you very much indeed Mark um so let's have a look um at two more polls please that we've got um coming up here um so coming up on your screen just shortly um and then we'll move straight to questions um so do get your questions ready we do have a lot of questions um already and uh thankfully we've got quite a bit of time to work through them so coming up last two polls for the day please to back toback polls um what is the greatest challenge that you have that you face right now or are you expect to face uh regarding onboarding suppliers now please do click as many as you need to that represent your situation is it the cost to the supplier to join the network is it the time and effort consumed with the onboarding process or the perceived time and effort consumed with the onboarding process is it the supplier push back because they're just generally resistant to change is it the lack of interoperability options that might be available to your suppliers because they're connect Ed to another Network or perhaps you don't know or none of the above um so please do share your experience with us uh we're only on 54% of you responding uh if you need a few more seconds just to think this one through what is the greatest challenge or what are the greatest challenges that you are facing or you expect to to face on to the regarding the onboarding of suppliers the cost of the supply time and effort consumed manually on boarding suppliers resistance to change lack of interoperability or perhaps none of the above we're at 64% of you responding let's close that poll and share the results coming up on your screen now so the the big one there interestingly is the supplier push back because of resistance to change so um I think uh that was very clear in what Steven was saying and also what Vel was saying about um really making it very clear as to what the the benefit are to the supplier to kind of push them over that uh resistance um and then resisting to change um and we have a few of them it's 26% uh because of lack of interoperability options 49% cost to the supplier to join obviously um obviously one of the benefits of working with trade shift um is that uh there's it's a free service um and time and effort consumed with the manual onboarding of suppliers okay let um look at the final Poll for the day coming up on your screen now um how do you or how will you encourage suppliers to join your network uh if you mandate your network to all new suppliers again this is multiple options so take all that apply um if you mandate the network to new suppliers take the first one if you mandate your network your invoicing Network to or your existing suppliers they existing and also new but existing suppliers take the second option uh we will be asking rather than mandating our suppliers to use the network um but we won't be mandating it it's going to be a request um if you actually looking to reject all non electronic uh invo electronic invoices please select the fourth option there uh perhaps you don't know or none of the above so 51% of you have responded there if we could try push that response up please to at least into the 60s and I'll be closing the poll in three 2 one okay let's have a look we were at 61% there so just tipped into the 60s uh the results coming up on your screen now so 69% of you say that you will be asking or requesting suppliers to use your network um uh 51% of you say that you'll be mandating it to all new suppliers 32% you'll be mandating it to all existing suppliers um and I'm assuming those will also be mandating it to New suppliers uh 10% of you are taking a firm line here and looking to reject all non uh invoices so no um so any invoice that's not electronic will be rejected so interesting results um now with all of that let's uh move through two questions so uh if you haven't already put your question through to me please do so we do have a lot of questions um so let's kick off with the first one and I'll address this one please to uh Trad shift um Michelle question for you please is cloud scan um an OCR based technology how does it work yes thank you Susie um Cloud scan is OCR based uh but Trad shift has built a lot of um capabilities on top of this OCR base um so we've we've built machine learning capabilities um some fairly sophisticated algorithms that allow uh for the the capture of the information from a scanned um invoice or from a PDF uh invoice um and and what what the cloud scan solution does is um continue learning from various invoices but also from across the network of invoices so um I believe what we've been able to do is enable a fairly high level of accuracy with fewer invoices so it takes maybe three to five invoices for the system to learn um you know the basics of where the the invoice amount the the PO number the the the line items and so on so it's it's it's uh it's OCR but it's it's more than that okay um a question for you please Steven how was um volume or how is volume discounts um or how are volume discounts handled um and how do you validate your invoices well the we we're not doing that on the on the portal of trade shift so that's uh still going through the the Erp we just Pro the invoice with whatever well as they come in uh and offer that to the Erp to deal with whatever discounts uh that need to be applied uh and the other question was what Susie um so and then invoice is being validated well that's what I refer to with the validations dynamically and statically so we provides uh lists of Po numbers and cost centers that are active or valids back to uh back to trade shift which they validate dynamically any invoice that comes onto the platform against and next to that we have a number of static validations like invoice dates and so on that will reject any invoice that they try to enter with an invoice date that is more than seven days ago or more than seven days in future okay good um so also with to you to you again please Stephen if I can direct this question obviously there you've been referring your presentation that it's easy and free for suppliers um so um I think you know there's a little bit of disbelief um that something could be so kind of uh so beneficial for a supplier so um is is just to make it absolutely clear it you're not supporting the fees for your suppliers it's actually free to your suppliers that's correct we're not we're not supporting that so we we pay per transaction fee to trade shifts and apart from that well nothing uh so suppliers do not have to pay to uh submit invoices to uh to trade shift okay good another question for you please uh Stephen how collaborative has um Finance been with the procurement function as far as working on this particular program uh a lot uh so it's it's it's a joint effort um and and that's important because whenever supplier uh contacts the HL it's important to have the same message going back yes it's important uh that you switch to trade shift and ebing because blah blah blah blah all the good reasons um so they have been vital in making this a success on the other hand I must say that the collaboration also improved now because the number of discussions with the suppliers became less as the onboarding process is much more efficient now so they need to intervene in in less situations than uh we used to in the past so the Buy in from their side has increased also uh significantly the last year in order to make this happen on Regional Global level but also within the countries when we together with them uh approach suppliers that have questions or doubts or do not want to so they're vital in convincing those uh to on board inde okay okay thank you very much Stephen uh velle a question for you how long does it take to build interfaces uh to integrate with a customer's Erp system if indeed an interface needs to be built buil uh that that might be a better question for Mark actually Mark if I could put that question to you please absolutely so um as far as interfaces we've got uh some existing connectors to some of the most U common erps such as sap and um so as part of our integration efforts with customers it can be as short as a couple of weeks um or depending on the amount of information that we're either bringing over or Sinking uh it could be you know a couple months but but typically it's in the weeks to month uh weeks to one or two month uh time frame is part of any integration efforts okay good thank you a question for Stephen uh since implementing trade shift how has the relationship with your suppliers changed um have you seen more collaboration or satisfaction well we we get feedback regularly about how easy it is to to connect to trade shift um and then well some of them it's it's really new to to submit invo electronically so they are positively surprised um further furthermore I'm not really into that because I'm far away in the back office Finance so I would need to check with the people uh having day-to-day contact with the suppliers whether there's any Improvement there but overall the feedback that we get is is fairly positive yes and also Stephen a question for you as well you you you mentioned a very low rejection rate it's very encouraging there 3% rejection which is which is great um but the question is uh if bearing in mind that the servic is free what is the reason that these this 3% is um kind of pushing back yep so it's only 3% but that also means that many of well we have 50% on board which means there is 50% that is still in the process of the of the campaign as well uh the main reasons why we have real rejections is because well companies only want to operate with one partner which is not interoperating yet with r shift uh or they're not able to well submit invoice electronically because it's very very small company um that's well computer illiterate and and things like that so uh these are the main reasons I think it's interrupts on other platforms and no idea what ebuilding means and how it can work thank you Stephen um question for you velle um if you can take this one it's about the kind of the geographical reach of of trade shift so I'm being asked if you are able to accommodate countries like well Africa um Asia Pacific Latin America America yeah absolutely so um we TR shift has offices um in China and and Japan um we've just recently launched Japan office uh we do have Partners in Latin America that um can they they really know all of the mandates and regulations around e invoicing in Brazil and Mexico and Chile and all of those countries where there's fairly strict regulations um and and they they you know are on top of all of those regulations all the time um we have suppliers that are on our Network that are in all of those regions already um so you know those those 500,000 suppliers I mentioned are are some of them are in many of those regions already so um and then just lastly also with with many of our customers we are going through you know different phases of um onboarding suppliers and and you know while while we might start in one region Europe Us North America um the the the following phases are often um you know rest of world okay um question for you again I think uh possibly to Mark actually Mark um obviously trade shift has in your in the solution portfolio you have a a great workflow solution um are you actually compatible with third party workflow sap Solutions absolutely uh when we look at the the overall landscape from an integration perspective um we we definitely take into play um the interaction with other workflow Solutions uh that would be from sap Oracle or any of the other erps um so you know that typically is scoped out as part of the uh implementation efforts uh and again we've we've worked very closely with uh other workflow um you know type products out in the market whether they're cloud-based or the traditional on premise okay um and another question for you please um Mark do you offer archiving for your suppliers um archiving and I um I'm a little uh since this is a Cloud solution there is you know the the the records are always kept and we keep them for you know uh up to 10 years um but from an archiving solution uh we work with customers to see what their retention requirements are and by all means we can um you know uh be able to comply to whatever their retention needs are um but really in Cloud Solutions the the thought of archiving uh and the existance of those records within the system um aren't what you traditionally think about uh with normal on premise systems okay that's great uh I think we is time for a final question we do have a lot of questions and I think what we'll be um looking and asking velle and Mark do um is to really come back to each of you that has sent through a question um analytics so the visuals that are provided um on the trade shift solution are very attractive what kind of analytics so this is maybe a question for you mark what kind of analytics do you make available if you um on the actual trade shift solution yeah in one of the slides you would have seen um there is a screenshot of of of one of the dashboards and some of the dashboards that we have um but we definitely have uh real-time analytics and dashboards um that reflect what's going on from your supplier side from your document side or even from your processes side so being able to identify maybe where some of the log jams are in your overall uh document processes uh so again uh we have very robust and the the same type of clean and real time analytics that we're able to reflect uh you know to to give you visualization into all of those areas great thank you very much indeed to Steven from DHL and to velle and mark from Trad shift um just to draw your attention that uh Trad shift will be joining us in Atlanta in two or few weeks time uh where we're going to be discussing for three days at Global business services so if you haven't already registered for that it's a nearly it will be sold out it's nearly sold out I think we're literally down to our last couple of places so if you want to join us there please do so if your colleagues in uh vat would like to join us for our vat compliance through sa control event in London uh that's taking place in November so please do join us for that we've got three great webinars as well coming up for you over the next few weeks so make sure that you uh look at what they might provide for you and do register for those thank you very much ladies and gentlemen for your time and attention today and we look forward to welcoming you next time goodbye