We have been running a Real Time Economy program in Finland since 2006 and it has become very clear that the elements created (from plan, concept to ready) will create the
biggest change ever in business processes and financial administration.
The change is achieved by migration to real time exchange of structured and eventually globally ISO-standardized business information between enterprises and with the public sector. The automation achieved save massively
work and costs, mitigates risks in many dimensions and lay the ground for real time management of liquidity and financing.
Migration to e-invoicing is laying a large part of the foundation (not a goal in itself) - due to its ability to create and transport structured data. Saving stamps and envelopes by e-mailing PDFs is not saving much cost and is not laying the base for automation
without resorting to difficult scanning procedures.
Banks in Finland were able to cut their combined costs in half with help of e-banking (and massively new dimensions of customer value and convenience). The automation layers created on top of e-invoicing will be much more important for society at large.