I am attending SAP's TechEd this week and noticed that International Flavors and Fragrances is speaking on the topics of SAP EDI and e-Invoicing. They are an SAP user and have chosen to use a BPO service provider to support the e-Invoicing requirements of Argentina and Brazil. The service provider is a global e-Invoicing service provider that SAP co-owns called Crossgate.
I had the opportunity to recently interview Crossgate's President Scott Lewin about e-Invoicing. He said there is a lot of interest in e-Invoicing today that is being driven by recent changes and deadlines for compliance coming from Mexico and other places.
With the soon coming deadline for compliance, Lewin said there is a surprising lack of information publicly available on the changes that Mexico's SAT is mandating for January 1, 2011. This lack of information has made it necessary for Crossgate to set up an office in Mexico and establish personal contacts within SAT to be able to get questions answered quickly and accurately. 'There are a lot of vague requirements that need details added," Lewin explained.
Crossgate supports all of these changes on behalf of their enterprise SAP clients. Lewin said that companies wanting to support all of the e-Invoicing requirements for countries around the world in house, can do it, but will need to set up a permanent team to review and adjust backend systems to meet the constantly changing requirements. "It is a moving target for each of these countries," Lewin adds. There are IT system changes required, business process changes and legal issues to address.
"It is our job to buffer our clients from these near constant changes as far as possible," Lewin stated. "We can adjust our managed e-Invoicing services and processes to meet many of these requirements without any work on our client's ERP side," he explained. "We have a team of experts working with each country to ensure our managed services are compliant."
A few weeks ago I wrote a series of articles about the changes and real time requirements that Mexico SAT is mandating by January 1, 2011. It is important for companies doing business in Mexico to recognize the changes that need to be made to the backend processes and ERPs in order to be compliant. You can either make those changes yourself, or find a service provider like Crossgate that can absorb most of those changes within their managed e-Invoicing service hub.
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Kevin R Benedict SAP Mentor, SAP Top Contributor, SAP Blogger
Independent e-Invoicing and EDI Analyst and Consultant
www.linkedin.com/in/kevinbenedict
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*Full Disclosure: I am an independent consultant that has worked with and for many of the companies mentioned.
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