I just had a quick glance at key players in the EIPP (specially those who are considered to have models similar to ebdex) space including those who integrate with accounts payable systems. To my disappointment, Accountis, Causeway Technologies, Burns e-Commerce Solutions, and Tradocs have no news to share this month. How sad is this? These are companies with revenues, customers and history. Yet we all complain about lack of customer awareness.

OB10 managed to get just one story out. Congratulations! (yes I am being sarcastic!)

• Career Education Corp. Joins OB10 e-Invoicing Network to Reduce Costs, Improve Financial Management.

But the story with Version One is completely different. Look at the amount of marketing they have done.

Version One Ltd:

• Largest UK minerals company hits gold with Version One
• PS Financials and Version One Form Partnership to Deliver Integrated Document Management Solutions
• American Health System Giant Saves Time and increases revenue with document management technology
• Version One launches Improved new look website

Do I need to tell these companies how important marketing is? Ok. I know at least one of the above companies have a very low marketing budget, but you can use free media such as blogging to your advantage. You just need to be bit more creative.

Tags: EIPP, e-invoicing, marketing, news. press releases, Version One, Causeway Technologies, Burns e-Commerce Solutions, OB10, Accountis, Tradocs

This is my 201st post. I started blogging on 9th Apr 06. Here are some statistics:

• 1 Authors To This Blog.
• 200 Posts Were Posted.
• 11 Pages Were Created.
• 161 Comments Were Posted
• 80 Different Nicks Were Represented In The Comments.
• 9 Links Were Added

For a live update, click here.

What I really miss is the simple blog stats counter available on wordpress.com. I believe this is unique to wordpress.com hosted blogs. I also messed up my sitemeter counter.

Tags: blogging, blog stats

According to Library House, 35 European companies raised €52.9 million (15 deals were undisclosed) last week – i.e. an average of €2.6 m per company. Among the UK based deals were:

• Shiny Media – a blog network – raised $4.5m from Bright Station Ventures in exchange for 50% of the company. Shiny Media attracts almost 3 million readers each month to its 22 sites, and employs more than 30 bloggers. If you want to read how they plan to spend the money, please click here. For coverage on vecosys, click here. Times Online article, click here.

The Library House has also relabelled its products and services as follow:

• Company database – VenturePedia
• Research and consultancy -  VentureInsight
• News output – VentureCast

The event programme planned for this year includes:

• Meet the Spinouts – March 8
• CleanTech – April 17
• MediaTech – May 17
• Essential Europe – June 21

Their database now boasts:

• 9,529 companies
• 7,031 investors (3,498 institutional, 2,926 corporate, 469 individual and 138 other)
• 31,907 contacts (18,250 executive, 7,164 CEOs, 2,440 chair, 1,402 non-executive and 2,651 other).

Board of Library House (click here for management team):

1. Doug Richard – Chairman & CEO – from Dragons Den
2. Charles Cotton – Executive Director
3. Sherry Coutu – Non Executive Director
4. Chris Chapman – CFO

Are you a start-up? Have you raised Venture Capital? Are you registered with Library House? If not I suggest you do today to get maximum exposure for your company.

Tags: Shiny Media, Library House, Bright Station Ventures, Vecosys, Doug Richard, Dragons Den

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I moved my blog today (29/01/07) for the second time since starting to blog in Apr 06. Please bear with me whilst I experiement with the freedom this hosted version of wordpress gives. Do let me know your comments as usual and please reset your links.

Any idea where I can locate the WP blog stat counter?

This blog is now hosted by Ixis. Chris and Mike, thank you. By the way, if you need any work done using Drupal, I recommend Ixis boys highly.

In Nov 2006, Causeway reported annual transaction volume in excess of 2.5 million for its Tradex platform, which has been operational for number of years and was originally designed specifically for the construction industry. Causeway also reported the value of transactions to be in excess of £1bn, i.e. an average transaction value of £400. Tradex’s customers include Sir Robert McAlpine, Taylor Woodrow, Morgan Sindall, Amec, Alfred McAlpine, Aggregate Industries, CEMEX, Tarmac, Hanson, GAP Group, Speedy Hire, HSS, Hewden Stuart, Greenham Trading, Jewson and Travis Perkins to name a few.

Celebrating the success, Duncan Speight, Tradex Business Development Manager commented, “The volume of transactions being handled through Tradex is proof that the construction industry is now starting to recognise the benefits of electronic trading. Initially there has been a general nervousness towards eTrading initiatives, however once organisations understand the simplicity of the Tradex service and start to calculate the potential cost and time savings, the decision to join becomes very straight forward.”

In the same year, but 10 months before, Accountis announced hitting 1 million transactions per day. However, this is achieved through managed and in-house solutions, i.e. not from single hub like the case of Tradex. Still no mean feat! In-house solutions are those sold to client organisations under licenses, and therefore may not result in recurring revenues for Accountis other than through maintenance contracts. Accountis’ clients include T-Mobile, Virgin Retail, Goodyear, Dunlop, Singer & Freidlander and Christian Salvesen.

Rhys Jones, Managing Director of Accountis said, “Our rapid growth is testament to the increasing trend for companies to embrace the benefits of IP technology and implement automated web-based EIPP systems. Our technology is flexible, compliant and 100% compatible. There has never been a better time to switch from paper to electronic.”

If you think above is impressive, see these figures from industry leader Ariba.

• Over 4 million desktop users
• More than 120,000 suppliers
• Savings of $12bn in 2004
• Sourced over $250bn spend in over 450 spend categories

Ok, Ariba offers much more capability than Accountis or Causeway and I could not find the number of transactions to compare, but I am certain it would be much higher than 1 million transactions per day. If you know anything better, please do share.

Tags: Accountis, Ariba, Causeway Technologies, Tradex, EIPP, e-invoicing, Supplier Network, Spend Management, Transaction Volume, Phil Brown, Rhys Jones

Bruno Koch has been providing consultancy services in addition to running EXPP events for the last 10 years. His company, Billentis offers advisory services to clients seeking EIPP and EBPP solutions, similar to my idea of forming ebdex Consultancy. Bruno has provided consultancy services to more than 100 customers from over 20 countries, a track record only to be congratulated. Bruno has done more to promote EIPP/e-invoicing solutions in Europe than anyone else I know.

The third EXPP summit will be held on 10th and 11th of September in the UK. The last summit which was held in Germany attracted more than 340 delegates from 25 countries. OB10 and Accountis are key supporters of these summits. I hope Bruno will consider lowering the fees to allow much larger participation.

Tags: Bruno Koch, Billentis, OB10, Accountis, EXPP, EIPP, EBPP, ebdex Consultancy, EXPP Summit

I spent most of this morning trying to ascertain whether BT Transact can be resurrected, as I saw an opportunity. Alas to my dismay, the decision was taken at least 7 months ago when BT wrote to their customers giving them 12 months notice. BT has made alternative arrangements for these companies including helping them to migrate to solutions offered by other companies. Now less than 10 customers are on the platform, and BT will continue to help them move to different solutions. It seems that BT has made enquiries to off-load the platform, but no viable option was found. They have pursued two avenues, one through a customer and the other through a competitor.

Key reasons for closure are:

1. Struggling to make decent revenues and profits in a challenging market over the last five years – this shows that when you are a large corporate, it is not always possible to make changes rapidly to respond to market changes.
2. Obsolete technology no longer supported by Oracle – this goes against the Oracle promise of life-time support.

At its peak, BT Transact offered connectivity through Open Network for Commercial Exchange (ONCE), and dealt with transactions worth over £ billions. It also had internal clients. In terms of A/P, BT uses OB10 with tight integration to Oracle back-end provided by 170 Systems. And the A/P function is managed by outsourced partner Xansa.

It is a sad day to see the demise of such a dominant player in the market.

Tags: BT Transact, BT, Oracle, eProcurement, ONCE, Open Network for Commercial Exchange

NW StartUp 2.0 brings software entrepreneurs and investment community under one roof. If you are interested in attending the next event, please choose dates you are able to attend from those listed on doodle.

References:

1. etribes
2. this blog
3. upcoming.org
4. David Terrar’s blog
5. TechCrunch – Sam’s old blog

Tags: NW StartUp 2.0, NW StartUp20, StartUp20, doodle, funding, entrepreneurship, start up

Have you visited Version One’s website in the past? Were you impressed? Probably the answer was "no". Have a look at their new website. Except for "Copyright 2006" at the bottom of page, it looks great. My disappointment is that there is no blog. But they have provided a RSS feed. What is also missing is details of the Board and the senior management. Perhaps, this is due to the fact that Version One is a family owned business. Actually owned by two families, Bray and McGain. Husbands and wives (I may have analysed this slightly wrong as there are 3 home addresses instead of the expected two) owning 25% each. They have grown organically since the incorporation in 1989 without requiring Venture Capital (VC). That is the same year Direct Data Capture Ltd was set-up. And both companies generate about the same level of revenues, both offering scanning solutions. And both are well run and financially sound. What a coincidence!

Why is that most modern companies need VC funding? Perhaps, it is due to the fast pace environment we live in and the MBA culture, i.e. form a company with a clear exit strategy. You have generally five to seven years to make it happen.

So who are the Directors of the business? Tony Bray is their charismatic leader. As the company is family owned, the directors are also the owners. Oops! I just found the directors page. Being modest, Tony has identified himself as the Sales & Marketing Director. Derek McGain, whom I have not met is the Technical Director. Here are their mug shots.

Version One has recently become the darling of many large software vendors. Notably, this includes Oracle, who have given them significant amount of publicity. Most of the solutions are distributed through 100 or so channel partners. Version One also has a green agenda, and became Carbon Neutral recently. Wow!

So, what does Version One do? They have number of solutions, these being:

1. Document capture, storage and retrieval – DbArchive, DbCapture, DbAuthorise
2. Electronic document delivery – DbMail & DbFax
3. Laserforms – DbForms
4. Automated payment systems – DbChequePrint and DbBACS-IP

Basically they are selling scanning solutions (with respect to item 1), which are growing rapidly. I keep wondering why customers continue to buy scanning solutions (most recently BP bought a solution from ReedSoft) when solutions like Accountis allow them to capture the document electronically before it is ever printed. I guess the reasons might be:

1. Companies still like to own IT solutions. They certainly can buy a scanning solution from Version One, IKON, etc and therefore percieved to be in control.
2. The electronic document exchange market is still not well known, even though EDI came about 40 years ago and companies still see XML/EDI based solutions as very costly and difficult to implement and maintain.
3. Companies has less trust on outsourced solutions due to security aspects. Hang on! we bank on line, don’t we? Same or higher level of security can be provided by web based exchanges.
4. Its also perceived that implementing scanning solutions is much easier. This is partially true as you only need scanner(s), software and integrating the solution with your accounts/ERP system.

Being a SME, Version One does not declare its revenues, therefore I am unable to comment other than knowing its around £4 to £5m based on previous conversations. Balance sheet and shareholder’s capital are sound, as well as the net current assets for 2005.

Tags: Version One, Accountis, Scanning, OCR, Tony Bray, Oracle, EDI, XML