Streamline Invoicing Payments for Public Relations with Ease

Invoicing payments for Public Relations

all right yes we are live everywhere so hello everyone uh we are live here on our webinar platform and uh and also on uh our SME banking TV so on our YouTube channel and if you are watching us on YouTube and you would like to participate in the discussion so please register by the link you see in the Stream description to have the possibility to uh ask questions to to our speaker so uh so let's start my name is Selena grenuk I'm CE director at the SMA banking club and I will be your host today and today we speak about invoicing and digital invoice management and my guest today is Katarina co-founder and business development director at partner Hub the provider of e-invoicing solution welcome Catalan hello hello everyone hello Elena uh all right before we go to to our topic let me mention very shortly uh some organizational information so our webinar is planned for 45 minutes uh we are recording this webinar so right after we finish you will receive the video and the presentation as well and we start from the presentation and uh afterwards we will have a q a session and you are welcome to ask your questions and type them in the chat and then uh we will be able to to answer them so let's uh let's go to our topic so e-invoicing can digital invoice management and um we've been discussing this topic for for several years already in the context of the SME customers but actually we can say that this topic is relevant now for all them for all the customer segments uh I would say and let's actually discuss today how the offering of e-invoicing as a service for the customers but also how invoice data can be used to create the value both for the banks uh and the customers and especially taking into account that the invoicing is becoming mandatory in the European Union countries during the next uh two three years and and actually other countries outside the EU also started to to implement and make its mandatory so Catalan I'm passing over to you at once so let's start from your presentation I know you have several also case studies to show so let's start from that and then and then have a discussion yes uh thank you Elena so thank you for coming uh for to this webinar today we will be discussing how different segments of the bank can be used can be served by using invoice data and whether it is worth for banks to launch and own invoicing solution for example for the SME segment or just stay behind and use data sources from the third party data sources uh just a brief introduction we have a widely digital invoice management solution uh and you can set up digital invoice Management Services using our technology and we are also uh at home with the topic when invoicing and financial services is integrated and we have defined and we have used cases for three different areas and we will discuss more uh in depth this today one is for the SME banking segment is is a business finance assistant which incorporates digital invest management and banking functionalities so it's kind of a new generation of SME banking application for corporate customers invoicing and request to pay integrated with each other can be a good use case and for the retail customers if there are uh digitally available invoices and receipts then the bank can provide this service I mean to present and store these services for the retail customers as well uh I am starting uh many times with this slide because I think this is the key to understanding of the importance of invoicing and invoice data in banking if you see uh this is the representation of data sets in the purchase to pay or order to cash process and you can see that the invoice data is the widest and deepest data source during the process which means that if you want to pay something or if you want to finance and then you are always going back to the invoice data which is also true from the other aspect each invoice must be paid at once or there must be a source of financing from which the invoice is paid so that is how invoicing and payments and the invoicing and financing activity it is a close the closely related to each other and what is also worth mentioning that in the paper-based word these activities could not be connected with I.T systems because it was very difficult but the technology now enables that these activities are provided in an in an end-to-end single solution as well and the data can flow between invoice data and and banking data seamlessly so this is uh this is uh the thing and this is the opportunity which can be captured by Banks and financial institutions and uh yes so this is the the representation of the invoice you can see that with the introduction of invoicing now there is still a PDF invoice which is which can be either printed out or viewed or saved and stored but behind this PDF invoice which is a human readable version of the invoice there is always a structured data invoice which stores all the invoice data in a data file in a structured format which can be processed by machines and which enables the automation of the invoice processing and this is where we are arriving that the digital invoice management and core banking services complement each other and if banks and financial service providers uh want to provide an end-to-end solution then they should start thinking about providing value-added services or at least about Integrations with Partners who provide this digital invest Management Services and they will need to have the capabilities to integrate with this third-party providers or and manage the invoice data which is uh which is given by these third-party data providers and all animation that why why we are talking about this today is that because invoicing is becoming mandatory and more and more country is the worldwide but also in Europe a lot of countries are introducing mandatory invoicing and this means that invoice data structured invoice data will be available and as I mentioned each invoice is a payment or financial financing opportunity for the bank so the bank must capture this data and data source to make its operations and and the processes more seamless so this also means that if you have a structured invoice data then you can digitalize your processes you can initiate or request payments based on the invoice data or you can initiate the financing process based on invoice data so there will be no manual input necessary from the customer side which means on one hand cost saving for the bank because you don't have to deal with paper on the other hand it will be a seamless payment or financing experience for the customer uh and uh if you don't if you as a bank don't do this then others will definitely uh find this opportunity so that's why we are having this webinar so that uh so that we raise the awareness about this issue and if you have the data in place then obviously you can use it either for risk modeling or segment modeling and you can uh you can also use the invoice data for cash flow projections to offer financing for retail and and SME customers alike uh I just put together a couple of ideas and use cases how invoice data can be used by the bank and you can see that all I would say major objectives of a bank can be uh can be you know fulfilled by invoice data so if we are talking about customer inside customer engagement and loyalty or launching new services and realizing new revenue streams or um or having cost efficiency costs then invoice data is something that is very useful everywhere just a couple of examples so when we are talking about customer inside if a bank starts for retail customers for example an invoice presentment service based on digital invoice data then if the if the reader customer gets its energy or utility bills in the invoice inbox of the bank then using the data the item level detailed data the bank can can for example uh propose savings on the energy and utility bills and if you have these invoice data then running the models the bank will be able to provide personalized questions and recommendations how to save more money how to optimize spending and if you are you know spend optimizing or spending then you will obviously have more uh money to save so this is something that is based on the simple effect of or a simple Service as an invoice presentment for read their customers talking about invoicing and integration of investing and request to pay if you know the invoice data is connected with the payment data then it is secure and the new way for payments which is a seamless customer experience and which gives more control and more information about bill payments for example if a customer has a has its beers in the bank then the bank can actually help the customer calculate the carbon footprint based on the actual spending patterns uh and uh it's a you know another possibility is just to set up customized loyalty programs with Merchants based on the actual spending of the customer so these are ideas and opportunities which are not here yet but if you will have the invoice data in your bank then they will be absolutely reachable goals and launchable services what is more relevant now is that if you have the invoice data you can provide invoice Finance or supply chain Finance for your SME and corporate customers you can provide a Integrations for merchants for leasing or bnpl options for example with using request to pay and integrated with invoicing and if you integrate invoicing and request pay you can solve for the automatic reconciliation of invoices and the payments for smes and corporate customers if you are going to the cost efficiency side I think I already talked about it that if you have access to structured Digital Data then a fully digital service model will be enabled for the bank which will which will significantly decrease your service costs for the SME customer base for example and if you use invoice data in your credit scoring then you can decrease your this costs because your credit scoring model will be much more accurate so you know you will make a better pricing for your customers on one hand and you will be able to have a better uh credit uh risk price built into your own pricing so these are just you know ideas some of them are closer some of the from an implementation perspective some of them are more remote but this shows I think the uh the value and the potential in using invoice data and how we uh structured in our minds and our offering uh for the banks based on the segments and and this slide also shows the complexity of a uh service offering so these are uh the offerings that are invoice related and that are customer facing services and the least difficult is just to provide an invoice inbox or invoice repository for retail customers here the bank only presents the invoices and just collects all the invoices from third-party data sources if we integrate digital invest management or invoicing with request to pay then this can be a good offering for medium and large Enterprises but also for smes where the payment request can be generated from the invoice data of the Erp solution of the banking customer and this means that the bank still doesn't have to generate an invoice it just uses third-party data sources but if it has the invoice and the payment request then it can track the whole payment transaction afterwards and can solve for the automatic reconciliation of the invoice and the payment and the payment request and this can this can happen like a 95 percent savings potential compared to compared to paper-based processes so we think that this is a new use case and the most complex offering is for the SME customers when the bank does not only do these services that I mentioned below but the bank actually launches an online invoicing or invoicing a solution then it gets to the detailed uh process of of issuing an invoices this is the most complex use case because this this part is already regulated from how it must be done in certain countries it requires also connections with the tax authorities and it can have multiple specific customer Journeys for special investing use cases so this is the most difficult thing however we can or we have the technology to help banks with all of these use cases and we are also in the process of making it easier and easier for banks to start these services uh I would just uh quickly show um an example how the on one hand the invoice inbox for retail customers and the integration of invoicing and and the request to pay for uh Enterprise customers work so I will just show this demo video so you can see the integration of e-invoicing and the request to pay you will we will be in an in-store payment situation where there is a waiter who will collect the payment and there will be a guest who will pay so that will be the merchant and the consumer side and Vivia show how invoicing can be integrated with request to pay in such a solution so you will see the you will see the uh both views both for the restaurant and the uh and the customer as well first the customer logs into its system it will show a QR code and enables the payment request functionality with this the customer can be identified so then the merchant in this case the waiter scans the QR code of the customer then it will be able to send the invoice and the payment request to that specific customer Vida was giving any card data or any other identification now we are going to log into the restaurants view so the waiter will just scan the QR code of the guest and then and then after that yes we are scanning the QR code and when the QR code is scanned then the customer is identified and the waiter can select which table to invoice after that the invoice is created automatically and in parallel with the invoice payment request is also created and the invoice and the payment request is sent to the guest banking invoice inbox now we will switch to the guest side to see how it looks so this is the guest side we can see that the there is a new invoice about the or from the restaurant and the guest will approve the payment request now we are switching to another application which is a payment request application and then the payment request is approved here obviously when it is uh done by the bank then the two applications would not be separated this is a European uh request to pay provider called answer pay now the guest approves the payment request so the payment is also triggered by the approval of the payment request so now we are switching uh back to yes you can see that the invoice was paid and after that uh after that we are switching back to the uh uh restaurants view so the restaurant application these are the applications that can be both launched by the Banks or provided by the Banks you can see that the invoice open amount is zero and you can see that the invoice status is paid so this is how the integration of payment request can be solved for an in-store payment but the same can be done for the uh the same can be done for the e-commerce transactions for uh bnpl offerings or B2B payments if you are interested more in the use case then I am happy to talk about more in details on a separate session uh the other use case that I wanted to show you today is that how you can process B2B invoice automatically and how you can initiate the payment transaction in this video you will be or uvsc the OTP ebiz solution for which we are providing the backend you can see that after the customer login there are functionalities for the dashboard solution you can see the features set for the uh dashboard so there is a dashboard which the SME can see uh this contains the revenues the expenses of the company and also the cash flows and these are always presented based on the actual data that is in the system you can see that there is the invoice management functionality that is always an incoming invoices and outgoing invoices so all the invoices can be stored in the bank but also issued in the bank now we are at the invoice invoice inbox and in the invoice inbox the customer can view its invoices and because it is a structured invoice data with the click it can approve it and then the customer approves and categorizes the invoice then it will be able so the system will automatically process the invoice itself and after that after that operations on the invoice data can be carried out which means that it can be paid or financed just with a couple of clicks now we are going to initiate the payment transaction from the invoice data so if we are going to the transfers menu then if we are clicking on the bill then you know just by clicking on the build the system will prepare the payment instruction and uh yeah so the payment is instruction after that it can be finalized and the payment is is carried out or is executed by the bank as a credit transfer so this is also a customer Journey which is which is uh which is very easy for an SME company so the SME company doesn't have to input the data manually for transfers it's just clicks on the invoices and they can be really uh paid with a couple of clicks so this is very convenient functionality for SME customers and if the SME customer has all its invoices both outgoing invoices and the incoming invoices in the system then it will have a you know uh One Stop Shop for managing all its financial affairs and can have real-time information about its business matters so this was the uh this was the invoice receipt and payment part for the SME offering and I will just show the you know trickiest part of the invoice facing offering with which will be the invoice issuance process so this means that the SME can issue its invoices from the banking application and this will be good for the bank because then it will have all invoice data also from the SME company so it will have a 360 degree view of the SME and if you have for example the customer invoices then you can provide the invoice financing or factoring for the SME customer so now we are just logging into the system and then you can see the same function like this so outgoing invoicing outgoing invoices incoming invoices invoice issuance uh banking data now you can see another dashboard this is the dashboard of the Bupa solution which we are also developing this is a Hungarian Bank too so now you will see the invoice issuance process and in the system we set up the invoice instruments process in a way that it can be configured very easily to any country and any tax regulation so it will be much easier to set up such a solution with us than starting from scratch so I would you know recommend to use some kind of service provider if not us than others for you not to start from scratch to develop this because what we have as an experience from our current customers that this can be the trickier part anyway you can see that the all the invoice data are filled and then an invoice is being issued but before issuing the invoice you can have a preview of the invoice and if everything is all right then you can issue the invoice and once the invoice is issued it can be sent to your customer via the Preferred channel now this will be an email sending but if you haven't inside the you know solution then it can be obviously delivered within the system or with API or any other data exchange mechanism that is required shared on the customer side so you can see that the new invoice appears in the outgoing invoicing list and the tax Authority data submission is also happening so this is the invoice issuance part of the service I won't I just quickly go through the reconciliation of invoices and payments so there is a Reconciliation engine in the system so if you issued an invoice and then the payment happens then the system proposes the most relevant transactions to be uh to be reconciled so this is also very useful for SME companies and just a glimpse how to how to work with third-party data sources if you are starting working with invoice data then these data sources can be other invoicing Solutions can be accounting software Erp Solutions or tax authorities it will be just a very short example how to work with structured invoice data so it will be a PDF invoice which is uploaded into the system and then if you enter the partner's name and the invoice invoice uh invoice details then you will see that the Hungarian tax Authority provides an API service based on which the relevant invoice data can be asked from the tax Authority and if you provide these two data then all the other data will be provided by the tax Authority sometimes the tax Authority doesn't ask for the payment data so that need to be put into manually into the solution so this is how you can you can get invoice invoice data from third-party systems if you are not talking about tax Authority but an investing solution then the principle for the data exchange would be the the very same so I was just talking about you know about the customer facing services and what are the services that you can launch for your uh for your customers and now I would like to just uh highlight what are the capabilities that you need to manage in manage invoice data related use cases so even if you are not launching a customer facing service but you want to work with invoice data or if you are not launching an invoicing service but want to uh yeah just provide an invoice presentment solution for your retail customers then you will still need capabilities like presenting invoice data you will need to be able to work with structured invoice data you will need to work and standardized standardize various invoice data structures and process various invoice data formats and you will need to it you will need to be able to work with invoice data from third-party data sources and you will also need integration capabilities so these are things that are needed if you want to deal with the invoice data if you are if still if you are not launching uh an e-invoicing service for your customers and um uh I just on this slide I summarized the whether if it's worth for you to launch an invoicing solution for your SME customers or not exactly because of the fact because of the fact that you know this is the trickiest part it is not always worthwhile uh to you know put the large investment both in terms of you know monetary resources and time and theme and capabilities so it it might not be for everyone to you know to launch an own invoicing service it might be a good idea to partner with the third party providers or just to have access to the invoice data from third-party sources because if you uh so what is uh what is the driver for you to launch an uh or e-invoicing solution for SME customers is that if you have uh smes as a core of your strategies if you want to become the primary Bank of the SME customer if you want to provide an end-to-end service around Financial Administration and you want to become a financial One Stop Shop for your SME customers and you want to become an ecosystem orchestrator then it is a good you know use case or a very good use of the case to start or launch an invoicing solution for your SME customers and what are the you know expenses or additional efforts that you will need to think about whether you are ready to do this you will need to understand what the details of invoicing and how an invoice system must be set up you will need to Define all invoice related cost Journeys and you will be where you will need to be prepared to maintain your investing solution from a compliance perspective good news is that we can help help with this all of these tasks but still this will be efforts that will be need to be taken by the bank somehow and uh just to uh just uh to mention with whom we have been working with uh we have been supporting OTP Bank the Hungarian Bank wedding and Banco Transylvania uh with launching uh Business Financial assistant for SME customers and we have done a POC with the private and Bank Hungary for the integrating of invoicing and request to pay for a corporate customers so these are the experience we have well this is the experience we have with Banking and today webinars was based on this experience that we have collected in the last I would save five or six years almost and uh thank you very much and if you have questions just uh please let let us know and ask the questions hmm yes yesterday question thank you very much Catalan for a great presentation and a very important topic you know that we've been discussing with you this topic for for several years already and I I do consider that's the invoicing should be included into the standard offer for the SME customers I mean I know that's you know the the this first implementations even starting with OTP EBS which was launched I guess five years ago something like this yes I'm going to be six years yes when the banks was thinking were thinking about that as um about the invoicing because the implementation of the you know exactly the end banking call value added services to differentiate on the market because really this is becoming a competitive Advantage when all the traditional banking services that digitalized already and we know the other transactions and uh I don't know currency exchange everything you have in all the online and mobile bankings of all the banks so this is not a differentiator and such actually product that gives value for the business customers are becoming the ones that differentiate spans on the market so Banks started thinking from that but now I guess and uh this is becoming an offer uh which smes need actually so this is uh this is real understanding of SME customer of business customers now I would say I need especially special smes so let's uh I will get to the questions from our entities and then and then we will discuss if you have time uh mine uh the first question comes from Marta thank you for that what is the source of tax rates for particular countries when you implement in different countries yes so there are the v80 laws obviously and these v80 laws uh and the invoice so there are reality loads and there are uh laws regarding the accounting of uh accounting rules of the countries so these are the two data sources official data sources that you can work with uh the good thing with us is that we can parameter each country very easily so for us it's not hard coding but parameter during the solution so if it if the v80 low is v80 rate is 18 or 17 percent or I don't know 25 or 27 percent it does not matter really for us we just need to know how much it is um yeah okay yes the next one from Naveen uh how are you managing the resourcing and stuffing in terms of technology and Niche skills and if I can add to that question at once actually knowing and having all the experience that you that you shown with the banks uh um that implemented actually this involves in case of service for them for the SME customers as the first part I see as a first idea and then already thinking about structured invest data which actually resources are needed from the bank side because this is a project I mean this is um uh yeah a big project so which resources are needed actually to create to want to develop to launch but afterwards also you know to sell and to monetize this offer this product yeah so I would say that uh you know product owner is definitely needed and the product owner team or business team and I would say that is the most important from the bank side because all the other capabilities like the technical capabilities are already there and then and this is kind of a new domain or new knowledge that the product owners need to be engaged with so it's kind of that part is you know that part is uh is the extra mile from the bank side and yes what is important I think for the whole team is the understanding of the invoicing use case so this is this is key because there are some things that are you know mandatory from a legal perspective then the team must understand that you know they cannot Define a customer Journey which is not compliant with the loan so these are the things that need to be understood but there are no special skills that are needed so this this is not like you know brain surgery I would say so this this is simply a new use case which must be understood and uh yeah so from um you know sizing perspective uh I would say a team of 12 10 to 20 people you know is a is the whole theme size to launch and and manage such a project and yeah and uh yes I mean I just thinking that um the I mean what we see from the from from different countries and that um now when they see in voting is becoming mandatory I mean in many countries so of course Sesame started to use um in different sectors uh I mean in different proportions in voice and so this is kind of uh not new uh as an idea but now when this is becoming mandatory like all the businesses will have to choose the provider so this is you know an old goal that that they will continue with with the paper invoices and Banks and this is a really great opportunity actually this opportunity is now to become such a provider because Banks can be and I think that Sesame customers believe here that the banks can be trusted providers here and the most important thing is that it can be actually integrated with the transactional banking at least to make it really this journey of usage of invoicing really smooth sense uh and and pleasant and quick for the smes another question from Marta is the invoice it will be required in the European Union this is still need to do OCR in the paper invoices that is the best question because not be used if there are already invoicings and the stress director of data invoices then and that is the good thing about the invoicing that if you have the invoice data you will have 100 you know percent data accuracy for reconciliation for data recognition and so on so uh OCR will be obsolete technology once uh invoicing is there so that you know that is the good thing and OCR will not be uh yeah really like you scan and you check and this is a lot of manual manual job should be done yeah and I think you you showed in this example with OTP uh EB solution that actually this is done in this way that the the customer receives the the invoice from the counterparty already in the system in this structure not via the VCR but in a true electronical format and then it really with no check-in manual checks you pay it in one two clicks right yes so that is the whole beauty of it you have data in the background the machines can you know work in the background and you will just you know we'll have to click and the work is done instead of basically yeah yeah I uh previously I just checked the to the question to answer from Naveen so as far as I understand next with the digital asset you know storage so what we did we did the POC uh to integrate invoicing uh with smart contracts so there I think I think multiple use cases can be defined how to manage invoicing and digital assets together however this is an area where you know where the tax authorities still need to you know keep up with the reality because because the invoicing regulations are not there yet so that they can manage these digital assets but you know if there is structured data on one side and structured data on the other side it can be connected you know in in many ways so it will be uh you know new uh domain how to deal with these you know the sale of digital assets and how you I would say how you implement the invoicing part for you know this digital asset transactions yeah but yeah so this is again a very exciting exciting and new area which uh must be must be discovered or must be I don't know yeah yeah it must be discovered what we did is that kind of we had a smart contract and actually the completion of the smart contract already just you know triggered the issuance of the invoice but you know a lot of use cases and Journeys can be can be set up all right and maybe the the last question to discuss to wrap up uh is let's probably discuss what are the the opportunity of usage of structure that invoice data when when it is here big courses you mentioned this is new and I think years now actually this is the right time to think about that and to start you know starts their implementations to have it tomorrow I would say because this actually changes the way of uh I mean the banking actually because if if the banks will have the access to the invoice data and this can be connected with them transaction data of course and if we go further and either the financial data in some countries are available for example or the banks are by creating the ecosystem and by implementing the online accounting for example you have also the access to the financial data of the of the customers I'm talking to about business customers smes then then like uh then they have all the data for the customers and they and that actually makes possible them everything the the payments as you the great example with payments request uh requested by I think the I mean this is this is what smes actually need to issue the invoice you press the button request the payment and this is and this is it and this is it and we know that here in the Central Europe only Hungary implemented right Hungarian Banks because uh this is obligatory rights in handling like the real-time invoice data submission to the tax Authority is uh mandatory since 2018 so yes thanks recognize this and they they launched such a solution but yeah so recently I I saw a presentation from Millennium BCP from Portugal yes they exactly launched the same concept like OTP Biz and um Hungarian Vancouver thing and there was so I just checked Lloyd's Bank in the UK has exactly the same solution Bank in India has such a solution so the most Innovative banks have discovered this as a new opportunity yeah yeah and then writers you mentioned that this with the structure it was that it will go the invoice will go invoice data will go right to the tax Authority so it means that the probability that invoice is that this is a fraud invoice data is minimized here this simplifies invoice Finance uh factoring right all the receivable Finance procedures uh then having all these data uh we can then uh talk about embedded real embedded financing and the finance in the context of the customer business so now when I issue the invoice this is the right moment to offer me either a loan or the factory I mean not tomorrow not before that but this is very right moment where I where the customers do you need the money now or yes yes yes you want to receive the payment right now yeah yes and not to wait while the quantity party will pay you uh then then you mentioned also Footprints carbon footprint calculator which is a next thing uh with this becoming obligatory for the for the corporations I think from this year and from the for the smes from 25th or 26th year uh and now to make this and even to receive a ESG certificate is a lot of manual job and actually including the invoice and transaction data into this processes it could yeah itself how you say it's a it it's like a no-brainer I would say if you have invested and then you know you can set up the algorithms how to calculate you know the carbon footprint of one kilogram bread or you know one server or whatever yes yeah yeah so a lot of a lot of use cases um can be you know implemented and uh uh by the Banks but to have this what what they should do right now what is your I mean suggestion for that yeah I mean they should recognize they should recognize that this is something that has you know money in it so they should recognize the potential I think and they should recognize the fact that if they are not doing it then someone else will definitely do this yeah yeah yeah it was the glitter is there it's like you know it's money on the street then you know someone else will take it or if you take it or if you you know see a purse on the street you can you know you you must pick it up and you can still you know decide what to do with it whether to keep it or go to the police so you know that's another issue that you know it's there someone will take it if not yeah that leaders will take the opportunity yeah yeah all right so now this is a decision whether whether you take this money yes or not all right so on this sentence I would suggest to wrap up today's webinar thank you very much Catalin uh for today's session uh great as as always thank you very much attendees and especially Marta Navin and all of you for your for your comment as well thank you for being active thank you and if you will need some details we are more details we are staying in touch uh we will send all the materials um after the webinar and thank you very much and goodbye see you next time thank you see you soon please