Recently the Belgian government implemented Mercurius, a centralized e-invoicing platform based on the EC-backed e-PRIOR initiative. If Mercurius takes it’s name from Mercury, the patron deity of messages and communication, then Babelway must be Mercury’s winged sandals. While Mercurius allows national and local authorities to receive e-invoices from their suppliers, Babelway will enable this communication as a technical partner connecting suppliers to Mercurius and ensuring they comply with government invoicing regulations.
At this point, you’ve probably heard about e-invoicing. E-invoicing refers to the process of automating your invoicing system electronically in order to integrate easily with the invoicing systems of your customers, vendors, and partners. In this way, the figures and information that you enter into your invoices are made to correspond directly to those of your partners. Compared to traditional invoicing by paper or even by email, e-invoicing can cut financial and organizational costs and even improve the economies of industries, cities, and countries.
With so many benefits – and the potential to save European businesses as much as €64.5 billion per year – it’s no surprise that the European Union has begun to push for more widespread use of e-invoicing. Recently, Belgium is leading this continental push by example. According to the Ministry of Administrative Simplification, Belgian companies saved €620 million in administrative costs by using e-invoicing during the year 2013, and the country could save as much as €3.5 billion annually if all invoices were handled electronically. With new goals of reducing storage space, saving time, reducing error, facilitating accounting and accelerating payment, the Belgian government has now implemented the e-invoicing platform Mercurius.
So where do Babelway’s winged sandals fit in? Recognizing the power and simplicity of our platform, the Belgian authorities have selected Babelway for a Proof of Concept (PoC) project as a technical partner to connect providers to e-PRIOR / Mercurius. Babelway’s cost-effective, cloud-based solution is optimal for all providers of the Belgian government because of its ability to interface with all enterprise resource planning (ERP) software platforms, including SAP, AX, Nav, Odoo, Winbooks, and Kluwer. With a do-it-yourself interface and plug-and-play ERP integration, Babelway makes it easy to employ e-invoicing for any government projects.
Babelway is proud to be an integral part of Belgium’s groundbreaking e-invoicing initiative, and also recognizes the great potential of e-invoicing for the country’s private sector. We are excited to get “mercurial” and look forward to partnerships with the Belgian government and both national and international companies.
