Pan-European Public Procurement OnLine (Peppol) is widely known as a network for sending electronic invoices to public sector customers in Europe. What makes Peppol appealing is that all participating stakeholders can communicate with each other by way of certified Peppol Access Points. To transfer data, one simply needs the recipient’s Peppol-ID – comparable with an email address. The technical execution, in other words delivering and receiving the data, is carried out by the access point.
These access points are generally operated by specialized service providers. Depending on their certification, these providers may be able to send data, receive data or both. In the system’s technical jargon, a company involved in the sending direction is known as a Post Award (PoA) service provider, while a company on the receiving end is known as an Addressing and Capability Lookup (ACL) service provider. Retarus is, incidentally, certified for both PoA and ACL.
Huge value also added in B2B communication
Companies are well advised to opt for a Peppol Access Point or service provider which supports receiving messages in addition to sending them, as this provides significant benefits for B2B communication:
- Covering the full scope of communication along the supply chain
- No explicit control by local authorities
- Encrypted, transactionally secure data transfer
- Utilization of EDI standards (with only negligible, regional deviations)
- No need for manual sharing of credentials, certificates, etc.
- Europe-wide network
- Virtually all well-established service providers offer a Peppol Access Point
Using Peppol for B2B scenarios is good for the bottom line, because hardly any new operational costs are incurred. A company merely has to share its numerical Peppol ID with business partners, while the service provider only needs to perform an initial setup. In this way, customers save time and effort for implementation – the more partners, the more appreciably – as well as cutting costs.
Companies often not yet aware of B2B potential
Many companies remain unaware of the enormous potential Peppol has in the B2B sphere. This is largely due to Peppol thus far only marketing itself as a B2G standard. Service providers, on the other hand, have long been pointing to the potential savings it offers as a B2B solution. In principle, companies can communicate by way of Peppol with all partners who are also connected to the network by way of one of the many service providers. And those who are already obliged to e-invoice or have customers in the public sector are usually already on board.
Retarus is fully accredited as a “Certified Peppol Access Point” and can connect public sector organizations as well as B2B customers to the eDelivery network via its e-invoicing solution. Beyond this, we are highly knowledgeable when it comes to system integration, the international formats required for electronic invoicing and highly scalable cloud services. To get started, all we need from you is electronic invoice data in the format of your choice and via your preferred communication protocol. Everything else will be taken care of by Retarus’ experts for business integration services.
