Digital delivery business revolution ready to get underway with budget announcement

MEDIA RELEASE: Australia’s leading digital delivery business, OZEDI, is calling on Australian business to start preparing now for what will be a revolution in how they interact with suppliers and bill customers, following a Government mandate announced as part of the Federal Budget this week.

Electronic invoicing (or e-Invoicing) is the automated exchange of invoicing information directly between buyer’s and supplier’s accounting systems, reducing the risk of fraud and providing a more efficient and accurate way of doing business.

As part of its $800 million digital technologies package officially announced in the budget this week, e-Invoicing is expected to be mandated for all Commonwealth government agencies from the end of next financial year and according to OZEDI CEO Christian Walkerden this will quickly spread across much of the Australian economy.

“We applaud the vision displayed by the Government with this announcement and look forward to playing our part in bringing it to reality,” he said. “It has long been clear that Australia needs the smart use of technology and digital automation to boost productivity if we are to remain internationally competitive and this will help achieve that.

“The main goals of this package from the Government are to facilitate business, crack down on fraud and help create faster payments for small business and e-Invoicing delivers on all these.

“The mandate means suppliers will need to connect to the network and they will need software to be enabled to do so. This means the clock is ticking for software providers to connect an e-Invoicing access point for their users and they need to start that process now.”

OZEDI is one of the Australian pioneers of business messaging and helped establish automated software processes for payroll, and superannuation with over 50,000 Australian businesses now using its systems. Co-founder and Director, David Field not only advised the Commonwealth Government on the introduction of the GST in 1999, but also helped establish the Australian Business Industry Software Association.

Field said the introduction of e-Invoicing across the world would create enormous efficiencies and significantly reducing fraud risk.

“Over time this will be nothing less than a revolution in the way we do business and early adopters will be in the best position to get the most gains,” he said. “With approximately 1.2 billion invoices issued in Australia annually, the ATO calculates that e-Invoicing could represent savings of $28 billion for the economy over a decade.”

LinkedIn article available here