LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The IKB Leasing Group – a leading leasing company in nine European countries – has signed up to the legally compliant e-invoicing services from Crossgate, the expert in EDI/B2B data interchange. It gives the company an alternative to outgoing printed invoices. In future, outgoing invoices will be signed and sent as PDF documents to customers of the IKB Leasing Group via Crossgate’s Business Ready Network, the transaction platform that already integrates more than 40,000 business partners. The original invoices are stored in the e-Box, a multilingual archive with web access and complete audit-compliance. Business partners can optionally select to have invoice data sent directly as EDI records to their in-house ERP system. In this way, the Crossgate solution can be adapted to customers’ requirements in a flash. In future, IKB Leasing’s French subsidiary will process its annual volume of more than 54,000 invoices via the Crossgate platform. By digitalising the invoice process, the IKB Leasing Group aims to lower its process costs and speed up exchanges of invoice data.
E-invoicing knows no borders
The IKB Leasing Group is active throughout Europe in nine countries, providing leasing concepts and expert advice to all sectors. In an effort to cater to future customer requirements on outgoing invoices as they arise, the company decided to switch to electronic processing for its large volumes of invoices to customers. The products of four companies were investigated during the selection process for a suitable service provider.
Jürgen Glasmeyer, Application Manager IT of the IKB Leasing Group, explains: “True to our company’s international orientation, we wanted an e-invoicing-solution that not only perfectly meets country-specific legal requirements from the start, but one that could also take into account our partners’ various IT requirements. In view of this, the flexibility offered by an invoice produced both as a PDF document and a structured EDI record tipped the scales in favour of Crossgate. Similarly, the multilingual archive system greatly impressed us. The Crossgate solution perfectly matches the individual requirements of our business partners.”
Business Ready Network – the e-invoicing hub
As a first step, the IKB Leasing Group will connect to Crossgate’s Business Ready Network via a standard interface. For future electronic invoice deliveries, Crossgate will receive the data from the IKB Leasing Group to then sign and sort it on its proprietary platform. After that, there are two options: 1. For business partners that cannot receive EDI data, the signed invoices are placed and archived in the e-Box on the Crossgate platform. They then receive e-mail notification with an attached PDF copy of the invoice. 2. All business partners can optionally have the signed invoices sent as EDI records from the Crossgate platform directly to their ERP system.
In the long term, the IKB Leasing Group aims to switch entirely to electronic data interchange for its outgoing invoices with business partners in nine European countries.
IKB Leasing GmbH:
As a leading leasing company, IKB Leasing Group’s approach is based on the principle of individual consulting. The company leases the full range of investment assets, vehicles or computers (including the appropriate software) as well as leasing with distributors for onward selling.
True to its conviction that “all business is local”, the IKB Leasing Group has established a network of subsidiaries in a number of European countries. The company currently operates in France, Austria, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Russia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. It has also formed alliances with prestigious partners in the UK, Switzerland and Benelux. All this ensures that the IKB Leasing Group can provide professional consulting far beyond Germany’s borders.