Digitization? Only a temporary solution

When paper receipts are scanned in German offices today, many entrepreneurs are already quite proud: "Digitization is in full swing at our company!"Sure, incoming invoices can be processed better in digital form.

Nevertheless, American business colleagues will only raise their eyebrows in the face of this rather limited conception of digitization. Because what has happened? The sender creates his document in a digital system, prints it out and sends it - only for the recipient to digitize it again. Many countries around the world are much further along in this respect.

Invoices no longer need to be scanned at all, because they already arrive in digital form, for example as an e-mail, PDF or XML. In Germany, too, we must now finally think ahead. Ultimately, the aim is to work digitally, i.e. electronically and automatically.

Digitization as a means of turning paper into bits should become less important as we increasingly operate with digital documents by default. Digitization is a transitional solution and should now become a discontinued model.

Digital work on the rise

The current home office situation in particular has clearly shown us: paper-based processes simply don't work from home. The shortage of skilled workers is also driving the issue of "digital working". If vacancies in purchasing and accounting cannot be filled, the workload is spread over fewer shoulders.

This can only work if manual, time-consuming routine activities are automated. You can only automate what is digital. If paper has to be digitized for this - fine. If paper doesn't have to be created in the first place - all the better!

Today's young professionals are digital natives and don't want to stand at the scanner or type invoices into SAP by hand. They have no reservations about working digitally and actually expect it from their employer. The employer benefits from this all along the line: not only does it save effort, time and money, but it can also evaluate digital data much better than analog data, which in turn provides important information and reveals potential for optimization.

After all, despite resistance and uncertainties, e-billing has now been introduced in public administration in Germany - a key issue when it comes to document-based business processes and end-to-end digital working. There may be many reasons why this has been rather slow. In the Netherlands, Italy and Spain, for example, it has been possible to send e-invoices to public authorities for several years. The only important thing is that something is moving.

Thinking ahead

In its latest customer survey, the xSuite Group found that companies in this country are also receiving more and more invoices digitally. The trend away from paper compared to previous surveys is therefore unmistakable. But anyone who thinks that's the end of the story is way off the mark.

Now it's time to think and rethink, to dare new things and experiment. Digitization is all well and good, but processes can do so much more. Why not go even further and digitally map all supplier communication, for example with a cloud-based supplier portal? This way, even the steps before the invoice would be carried out digitally throughout.

Orders could be sent digitally, the supplier could create the order confirmation and later the invoice directly in the same system and also send them digitally again. The entire document exchange in the course of procure-to-pay processes thus takes place digitally. Media discontinuities are not only overcome, but abolished. And we no longer need digitization.