Monday 8th September, 2014

Neelie Kroes, Vice-President of the European Commission in charge of the Digital Agenda for Europe, highlights the success of PEPPOL (Pan-European Public Procurement Online) and its potential leading role in the future of public procurement.

e-Procurement savings are estimated at €50 billion per year in Europe and, with its common standards and infrastructure, PEPPOL has the power to unleash this opportunity for the entire region.

Since 2008 PEPPOL has been developing and implementing technology standards to align business processes for electronic procurement across all governments within Europe. From 2012, the responsibilities for life cycle management and governance was handed over to OpenPEPPOL AISBL.

PEPPOL is part of a wider EU strategy which has its foundation in the Digital Agenda for Europe and implemented in several policy documents, such as the EC communication, A strategy for e-procurement.

The recent announcement from the Department of Health confirms that the NHS is mandating the use of PEPPOL and GS1 standards, NHS trusts are projected to cut £1.5bn of procurement efficiencies, by the end of 2015-16, through the NHS e-procurement strategy.

Norway, Sweden, Denmark and France have already established PEPPOL Authorities at national level to ensure public sector governance and a level playing field for service providers offering PEPPOL-based services, and other EU governments are planning to follow the same path.

In Norway, over 4.7 million electronic invoices were exchanged using PEPPOL within the first seven months of 2014, with 44 service providers offering access to the PEPPOL network, as PEPPOL Access Points.

Now that the strategic direction has been clearly defined, EU governments and businesses should look no further to implement e-Invoicing and e-Procurement, ensuring the benefits of interoperability and leveraging on these successful developments.