Paris, April 4th, 2019 – The Oodrive Group, the European leader in sensitive data management, will establish a partnership with Pitney Bowes, an American specialist in postal franking and integrated mail and document management solutions. The companies will jointly launch an electronic invoicing solution with embedded authentication certificates – RGS* (with reliable audit trails) or RGS**/eIDAS. The solution emerges as part of the French government’s paperless policy as stipulated in decree n° 2014-697 of June 26th, 2014. Double-digit growth is expected in 2019 for this segment.
Electronic invoicing is mandatory for entities which issue paperless invoices to government organizations and local authorities: it concerns large businesses (over 5,000 employees) since January 1st, 2017 and mid-size businesses (250 to 5,000 employees) since January 1st, 2018. On January 1st, 2019, it became mandatory as well for small and mid-size businesses (10 to 250 employees) and will apply to small businesses (fewer than 10 employees) from January 1st, 2020. With decades of expertise in electronic document management, Pitney Bowes can readily assist its clients in their fiscal paperless projects within the current market environment. The company relies on leading partners such as Oodrive to ensure document integrity, and the security and confidentiality of data exchanges.
A three-party partnership for a ready-to-use fiscal paperless solution
For the past several years, Oodrive and Pitney Bowes have enjoyed a client-supplier relationship and worked on specific, one-time projects. Today, their more extensive partnership will include collaboration on a ready-to-use solution to issue and authenticate electronic invoices for Pitney Bowes’ clients. Oodrive works with a third party: Objectif Lune, a software publisher – and Oodrive partner – that specializes in the automation of business processes regarding production and management document distribution, and whose PlanetPress Connect application supplies the certified signature solution.
“An electronic invoice requires an integrated, traceable and authenticated signature throughout the process chain to ensure its validity and for it to be admissible as evidence in any client or supplier litigation. The process is endorsed by CertEurope, Oodrive’s certification authority, which delivers RGS* and RGS** server certificates in compliance with eIDAS European regulations”, commented Sylvain Lefeuvre, Chief Sales Officer Partners at Oodrive.
A PlanetPress Connect plug-in with a fully embedded signature collects information from various third-party information systems and ensures electronic invoice automation and certification.
Production in less than two months
The Oodrive and Pitney Bowes partnership was signed on October 22nd, 2018. The testing phase began in November and gave way to a gradual rollout to Pitney Bowes’ clients and the first client signatures in December. As the result of an agile development process implemented by a team of experts from Pitney Bowes and Oodrive, the ready-to-use solution was on the market in less than 2 months. Key to the project’s success: reduced time-to-market and agility.
“We precisely estimated the workload it would entail to integrate existing clients into this type of offer, and established our technical and sales schedules accordingly. We worked closely with Pitney Bowes and Objectif Lune to verify technical aspects and ensure the solution’s compliance with CertEurope regulations”, concluded Sylvain Lefeuvre. Focused on continuous improvement, the companies will pursue their technical collaboration.
A double-digit growth target for 2019
Several dozen clients have already signed documents on the platform. Furthermore, a series of signatures from one single client this year has been estimated at nearly one million euros.
Commenting on this, Pascale Duclos, Sales Director for Software Solutions at Pitney Bowes, said: “We already possessed genuine expertise on Chorus Pro, an electronic invoicing portal for all the suppliers in the public realm. Thanks to the solution we developed with Oodrive, we will expand our service offering, provide added value to our clients and rapidly take over new markets. It confirms our ability to reach our double-digit growth target in this segment.”
Besides issuing invoices, the new solution opens up new perspectives for other uses, such as medical reports in the healthcare industry. Objective: to ensure double-digit growth in the fiscal paperless market and obtain several million electronic signatures in the next three years.