Peppol Germany

The National IT Planning Council in Germany has made future-changing decisions that will shape the future of procurements in Germany. But the effects won’t be limited to the national scale, but also on an international scale. The movement is the crucial part of implementing the Directive 2014/55/EU which focuses on mandating public and private sectors, including government bodies to conduct the procurement electronically.

The peppol Germany has become more relevant nowadays since it can open a lot of opportunities for the businesses and suppliers to get involved in the international market.

As mandated by the government, it has now become fair for organizations to procure invoices and other business documents electronically.

The past problem with procurement is that each organization might have different procurement services to use. When one document from particular software is transferred to another system, the risks of errors are rising because they are coming from different systems. This problem has been pretty common in the B2B and B2G public activities. To overcome this problem, peppol Germany enters in the equation.

Managed and supervised by the official Peppol Authority called KoSIT, the public and private entities can work together to implement the new set of standards that will benefit all parties in the procurement activities.

What is Peppol?

Peppol is an excellent solution that can boost cross-border eProcurement across the globe. The particular solution initially covers the practices in the European countries. But as time goes by, more and more countries outside Europe start to adopt the new set of standards and specifications. The use of the peppol network is governed by the authority appointed in each country. In Italy, the authority is called KoSIT.

The one which creates this set of standards is OpenPEPPOL. For those who haven’t known, OpenPEPPOL is an international non-profit organization that focuses on the PEPPOL project plan and execution. The organization was established in 2012. but it didn’t take time to attract numerous participants to use the peppol network to streamline their eProcurement processes.

Doing particular business with public entities is a serious deal for many businesses across Europe. According to the statistics, public procurement is responsible for 18% of the European Union GDP.

How to optimize e-procurement with Peppol?

Back then we stated that 18% of European Union GDP came from public procurement. However, it is not as effective as it should be.

The procurement procedure will be effective only if the documents and information exchanges between the private and public organizations are fast and cost-effective.

The utopia which started from European Union is the Digital Single Market. With this principle, all of the European companies will be able to exchange the documents without any hassle.

PEPPOL focuses on tweaking the important components and variables of public procurement. The non-profit organization professionals have made a good analysis on the matters for improvement. And then, they create the set of the technical specifications which can be implemented into the existing e-Procurement systems and software across different devices and companies.

As mentioned there are different document exchange solutions across the globe. Most of them use various languages so that the risks of misunderstanding and errors are higher. As the peppol services are applied in the existing eProcurement systems and solutions, these problems can go away. Not to mention that these will also interoperability amongst the systems across Europe, even across the globe.

It is not anything like the conventional Electronic Data Interchange. Back then, each provider would need a particular contract to provide the service to a specific customer. They will take time to adjust and specify the customer’s needs.

In the peppol network, all who register to peppol will be practicing the procurement under the same set of rules. That means the suppliers or providers won’t need to write the contract from scratch. They could just proceed to do their business.

Who’s it for?

So, who’s going to reach out to the Peppol access point provider for getting the Peppol set of standard solutions? The peppol services are supposedly for public and private entities who are conducting the procurement.

The transactions can happen in B2G – between business to government, B2B – Between business and Business, as well as G2C – between government to citizen.

Which countries use Peppol?

There are currently 39 countries in total that are participating in the peppol network including Germany. Thirty-one of them are European countries. The others are outside Europe. That is also solid proof that peppol can become more relevant for many organizations in other countries as well. It is not exaggerating to predict that it will become the global standard in the international market.

In each country, there should be an authority that manages and supervises the procurement service which is compliant with Peppol. However, it shouldn’t be a problem for those who do not have authority in their country since the particular organizations can opt to get help from OpenPeppol AISBL instead.

Which companies are already connected to Peppol?

KoSIT is the German Peppol Authority. It is an important part of the e-government division. The main objective of KoSIT is to help the IT Planning Council in adopting electronic solutions. When it comes to transactional documents, German also has its own standard called Xrechnung and protocol AS4. Although AS4 is not obligatory in other countries, it is mandatory in Germany.

How do I connect to Peppol?

To use the peppol services, the organizations must connect to peppol access points. They can get it from a reliable peppol access point provider.

The action above is mandatory for all businesses and organizations in order to connect to peppol. If not, they won’t be able to send and receive the automated documents in their exchange service.

In an old-fashioned way, the involved parties should be able to work with several exchange services providers. But that’s not the case with the peppol Germany. The organization will just need to connect to the specific peppol access point, and they will be ready to exchange the documents with any party who is also connecting to Peppol.