A Guide for the Perplexed: When A/P Automation, E-Invoicing and Trade Financing Intersect

出来了钨’s customer event last week, a number of thoughts rushed through my head around the market(s) in which the provider competes, and honestly, (even from my perspective) how confusing the company -- and its peers competing in the e-invoicing, AP automation, P2P, trade financing, B2Bi, EDI, procurement/AP/payment analytics and related markets -- must be to an outsider, let alone insiders such as experienced customers, consultants and analysts. The thought occurred to me that it would be useful both for my own formal research plans and for our readers to informally capture some of these thoughts on paper, which is precisely what I’ll do in a series of posts exploring the contradictions and challenges inherent in the intersection markets of A/P automation, e-invoicing and trade financing.

Today, I’ll start first with 4 of my first high-level observations, and subsequently, I will flesh these out in in remaining posts in the series.

1. A / P自动化和电子发票仍然经常被视为单独的市场和投资领域，但他们需要走到一起。
2. Too many people “don’t know what they don’t know” about the market. Perhaps owing to the complexity of different areas of it and different philosophies espoused by providers, the lack of general clarity is both surprising and a bit scary, making it difficult for prospects and customers to create fully informed shortlists of options.
3. There is little understanding of how different solutions can and should fit together (e.g., can you leverage a third-party/supplier management solution to do some aspects of onboarding for e-invoicing, invoice discounting or reverse factoring/SCF programs?)
4. 与EDI，B2BI和其他类型的点对点以及集线器/辐射模型集成服务相比，供应商/商业网络的角色仍然存在显着的困惑。客户需要在这些领域更聪明地制定更明智的决策，并为交易支持创造了更多的整体策略，而不仅仅是对基本电子发票的间接和服务类别，但更广泛的直接材料支持，可能包含一系列其他交易文件。

As my observations continue, I’ll come to points 5-8, which promise to be a bit more incendiary. And after the introduction to the series is complete, I’ll begin to flesh out each of the points in more detail in individual posts.