Founders, Rhys Jones and others, and new owners of Accountis, FundTech must be so thrilled to finally be able to announce the deal with Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS). Accountis has been working on this deal for many years, which I came to know at least over 18 months ago, but was requested not to blog about it at the time.  The relationship between Accountis and RBS thrived when Accountis decided to use RBS Trust Assured to authenticate the identity of its userbase during e-invoicing transactions.

Two key reasons that further attracted FundTech to Accountis other than the team and technology are their flagship customer DHL and the deal with RBS. This is a deal that Accountis had to complete. Whilst I have no direct information, I assume this was also part of the earn-outs built into the sale of Accountis. This would have put significant pressure on Rhys to get the deal completed as quickly as possible. The technology platform also required considerable amount of work to meet the strict requirements of RBS. All that hard work is finally bearing fruit. Well done guys!

So here is the press release:

Accountis Ltd, a Fundtech company and provider of secure financial document exchange and payment systems, has announced a multi-year agreement with The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) to provide the bank with an RBS branded e-invoicing solution and service. The partnership deal enables RBS to provide a VAT compliant e-invoicing service to their corporate customers with the prospect of additional invoice based financing services from the bank.

Corporates currently have very little overall visibility of the Financial Supply Chain. The Accountis e-invoicing service provides detailed status information, such as proof of delivery, acceptance, query and approval status for all documents involved in a business transaction from Purchase Order to Invoice. Invoice receipt and discrepancy resolution are often the most costly elements of this process. The service provides real time dispute management that enables our customers to optimise the speed with which exceptions are resolved.

The use of the bank e-invoicing service within the Accounts Receivables department provides corporates with the possibility of improved operational efficiencies and, more importantly, with quicker payments, reduced ‘days sales outstanding’ and reduced working capital requirements. It also facilitates the bank provision of invoice-based financing services. The use of the bank e-invoicing service within the Accounts Payables department provides corporates with the opportunity to implement efficient early payment discounting schemes, thereby reducing spend. It also provides detailed and fine-grained visibility on order book and enables further bank trade finance services.

Overall, e-invoicing provides corporate clients with significant benefits and provides RBS with a powerful addition to their suite of corporate services. Ian Watkinson, Head of E-Invoicing for RBS, explains;

“For our customers we see e-invoicing as a fast-track to saving time and money. In addition to eliminating paper and automating manual processes, users of the service will quickly benefit from real-time document management, faster settlements and better working capital optimisation.”

“AT RBS, we see e-invoicing as a strategic addition to our existing product portfolio. By offering additional transaction services such as e-invoice delivery, we will gain greater visibility of our customer’s end-to-end, financial supply chain transactions. This will help us to improve our understanding of their business and strengthen our long-term relationship. It also places us in a better position to offer additional services such as supplier finance provisions and other innovative finance arrangements.”

Peter Radcliffe, Executive Chairman, Accountis, said: “The e-invoicing marketplace is growing substantially and customers are demanding a simple but flexible service they can trust. We are delighted that RBS has recognised this need and has chosen to partner with Accountis to offer a best-in-class service to their customers. This partnership places both Accountis and RBS is an excellent position to fully embrace this growing opportunity.”

What valuation would you assign to an EIPP provider? Should this be based on past performance, future potential or a combination of both? If so, was Accountis sold too cheaply to fundtech? Who held the upper hand during negotiations? Or was the shareholders of Accountis too keen to sell and move on? Have they moved on? Will they earn the earn out? Why has they not achieve traction, as most of us expected over the last few years? Was it a handicap been based in the North Wales? Was return on cash burn really a good performance indicator? Where will the next major client come from? How is the DHL roll out performing? What is happening in Germany? What is happening at close to home?

Technorati Tags: Accountis

Congratulations to Jamie Gunn and the team from OB10, and their client Kelloggs for winning the "Shared Service Centre Organisation of the Year’ award in Barcelona at the IQPC Shared Services Week.

IQPC is organising a seminar next week from 16th to 18th in Brussels and 18th to 20th in London. Strapline is "one agenda two locations". As usual, attendees are expected to pay a hefty price from GBP899 to 2099 plus VAT depending on the time of booking and extent of attendance. Whilst I appreciate that the organisers must make a profit, the hefty price excludes the participation by smaller businesses.

Click here to access the event page. Here is an extract from the event home page:

With new legislation like SEPA, speeding up European payments and a noticeable global credit crunch, the need to transform your siloed AP and Procurement processes is now business critical. Innovative companies are driving forward the need to view the P2P process holistically and strengthen the financial supply chain.

IQPC’s European Purchase-to-Pay Week 2008 will provide you with both the practical ‘how-to’ knowledge you’ll need to further refine your P2P process and the strategy to improve your financial supply chain. If your aim is to eliminate your exceptions list, drive compliancy and collaboration into your processes, improve performance, gain control over your supplier relationships and work towards a truly paperless environment, this event has it all.

Collect the tools and knowledge you need to go back to your company and apply key learnings on both a strategic and tactical level, ensure your P2P function becomes a value adding tool!

If you wish to register for above seminar conducted by JP Morgan Chase on 19th June 2008, please click here. Here is the synopsis of the seminar:

Traditional purchasing card programs have focused on low-dollar purchases with limited approval requirements and transactions initiated by suppliers. Today, next generation card settlement programs are available to replace paper check settlement for accounts payable spend. These card-based settlement solutions lay the foundation for transforming your entire payables process with far-reaching operational and discount savings.
In this free online seminar, James Tucker, JPMorgan Xign vice president and product director, will explain how you can:

• increase rebates by converting mid- to high-dollar paper check payments with a card-based settlement solution
• automate and streamline your entire payables process from PO delivery to invoice approval to payment
• capture significant early payment discounts with five times the savings potential of invoice automation alone

This online seminar will also discuss how you can leverage the tens of thousands of suppliers already transacting in the JPMorgan Business Settlement Network to achieve rapid results and value.

Following changes will be effective from today:

1. Northern StartUp 2.0 Blog – Startups including events – Others are welcome to contribute, do let me know if you wish to blog about your startup, the Northern ecosystem, or lack of it.
2. edocr.com – the progress of edocr
3. Manoj Ranaweera.com – EIPP and other points of interest without extensively covering events and edocr

Lately, this blog has covered more events than anything else. And it’s focus has become blurred and may no longer stand as a specialist blog. There is no synergy between startups and EIPP unless its EIPP startups. So, it makes sense to revert to the original intentions of the blog. I look forward to your continuing engagement.