OB10 helps Tesco to eliminate paper invoicing

Retail giant Tesco has switched to electronic invoicing in a move to eliminate re-keying and improve the accuracy of its billing process.

E-invoicing enables businesses to eliminate the paper, printing and postage costs associated with traditional billing, and also removes manua points of failure.

Ryan Harvey, finance manager at Tesco’s service centre in Bangalore said that Tesco’s existing invoicing process has too many points of failure The company has switched to an e-invoicing service provided by OB10.

“This is because as all invoices are currently scanned from the UK and keyed in Bangalore and so the data integrity and control that OB10 brings is crucial.”

“We are also a growing international business and a key requirement was for a solution that we could scale across our Group in the future without significant growth to the Accounts Payable team; OB10 meets this requirement.”

E-invoicing basics
E-invoicing is an alternative to Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) as a method of dealing with supply payments electronically.

E-invoicing uses the internet to connect businesses with their suppliers and automates the processing of invoices in accounting systems. It speeds up payment times, improves the information in ERP systems, reduces the human resources required and eradicates inputting errors. It also cuts postage costs and reduces waste paper.

The technology is moving to the mainstream as the European Commission pushes it as part of its drive to cut costs in supply chains. The Corporate Action on Standards project, set up by the European Payments Council, said that e-invoicing allows companies to cut the average EUR30 cost of processing a paper invoice by 80%.

In 2007 logistics company DHL rolled out e-invoicing across Europe, and expects to save millions of pounds by reducing billing costs by at least 15% across the region.

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