Digital signature solutions for e-Invoice e-Billing e-Statements
Bulk server-side corporate signing of documents
For many years large corporations have seen the benefits of using electronic message exchange with their suppliers. Traditionally this was done using EDI and VANS. The Internet explosion has seen the use of electronic documents accelerate to include small and medium enterprises using techniques such as e-Invoicing. The drive to stop using paper has led to use of e-Billing and e-Statements even with consumer end-users.
Studies have shown that total cost of manual paper invoicing can be as much as €30/invoice and that e-Invoicing can save up to 80% of this cost. Looking just at the European market, it has a volume of about 30 billion invoices per year and more than 12 million trees could be saved if electronic methods were used to replace the vast majority of paper based invoices! The benefits of e-invoicing/ e-billing and e statements compared with paper-based system include:
| Manual Paper-based Process | Automated Electronic Process |
| Expensive to handle and transfer | Up to 80% cheaper |
| Extended delivery times | Immediate delivery |
| No proof document was received (assumes no recorded delivery for bulk documents) | Document can be emailed OR downloaded from website and noted as read. Signed receipts can be provided |
- Recipient may reject document many weeks later because of missing information
- 15% of recipients require reminders to process document
| - Automated validation of key data as soon as document is sent
- Auto reminders to recipients based on configured policies
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- Requires large scale, expensive storage space to archive many millions of documents
- Difficult to search through archive
- Difficult to back-up or duplicate the archive and requires even more storage!
| - Automated archiving after documents sent (or received)
- Easy to find the original document using metadata searches
- Easy to back-up and maintain resilient copies of archive
- Able to protect the authenticity and integrity of archived data using digital signatures and timestamps
- Easy to re-evidence for long-term preservation
- Able to archive millions of documents on a single hard-disk!
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- Separate manual workflow (e.g. payment of invoice)
| - Integrated workflow for straight-through-processing of document (e.g. automated validation of signed e-invoice and transfer to accounts payable system)
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- Requires expensive paper and transport with a negative impact on environment
| - Green alternative with a positive impact on the environment
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