Europe

17.12.2008

Dear Santa,

We have been really nice, technology-neutral and hardworking Experts this year and look forward to you bringing us a few presents to play around with in 2009.

The first wish is a book - more precisely a handbook. We namely wrote a letter to the EU Commission in July and asked for Equal Treatment of paper and e-invoicing (from VAT-angle) and a bit to our surprise but certainly to our joy we did get it. Now it is naturally up to all the member states to join in with..

 I attended a film screening of “Us Now” in London on 10 Dec 08. UsNow is a documentary film project about the power of mass collaboration, government and the internet. directed by Ivo Gormley, the film takes a look at how the web is changing the ways we organize ourselves. using examples such as 35,000 fans running ebbsleet united football club online and the bank zopa, where everyone is the bank manager, ‘Us Now’ explores whether these online participatory networks could deepen our democracy..

We analyzed mobile games and found that the consumers value (1) game quality, (2) gaming experience, (3) ease and quickness of setup, and (4) social aspects. To answer to these consumer needs, developers of mobile games can improve the (1) Audiovisual effects, (2) Customer support, (3) Product information, (4) Product comparison, (5) Trust, and (6) Independence of time and place in purchasing process. The gamers were categorized into (1) value seekers, (2) heavy players, (3) casual gamers, and..

The next step to RTE is as we know e-invoicing. Here we have seen any number of great news - together they mean massive progress.

In Finland: - over 70 000 enterprises signed up in Nordea, over 40 000 in OP-bank, great campaign in consumer invoicing by invoice senders,public sector, banks and TietoEnator, Kesko declaring e-invoicing mandatory, several more on the way, state sector aiming for 100% by end 2009, extremely good growth in usage

In EU: - expert group and EU driving equal treatment of ..

Writing realistic business plan that predicts correctly 5 years of business success is really challenge.

Instead of Goverment giving Word document and Excel Sheet there should be a service that would give guidance based upon the knowledge of Financial Cluster from the Specific Industry to make better Business Plans with faster time-to-market

As an entrepreneur, steering your startup on the financial path to success needs an effective financial roadmap and a thorough understanding of how it will ..

The operators that act as intermediaries in the field of electronic invoicing (banks and IT operators) differ in the way they create value for their customers. According to the research conducted at the Helsinki School of Economics and Politecnico di Milano, banks focus on providing the market with an inexpensive way to transfer invoice data. On the other hand, the IT operators focus on creating complementary products and services to the e-invoice. In addition to lowering transaction costs and..

I finally got my presentation uploaded and synced with the slides. The presentation, "Social Media Developments in the Real-Time Economy" is in finnish (but slides are in english) and was given at the Real-Time Enterprise Summit, Finlandia Hall, 6th of October 2008.

The presentation can be viewed here.

The Federation of Finnish Financial Services (FKL) launched today an e-invoicing campaign for consumers in collaboration with the Finnish banks and several companies who send over 1 million invoices per year.

The main goal of the campaign is to raise awareness of consumer's e-invoice and its benefits. Bill Virtanen, a virtual e-invoicing expert, has been hired for the campaign to answer consumers' questions in Suomi24.fi -portal.

Check out the following site for more information (in Finnish):
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It seems that the strategy aimed at promoting electronic invoicing needs to be analysed through two different aspects; the internal and the external aspect.  Each aspect needs to be tackled with different approaches, but with the sole strategy of becoming fully incorporated with e-invoicing.

Internal Enterprises

Before changes are undergoing, it is vital that there is commitment from all deparments, including the upper management and lower level employees. A corporate vision promoting e-invoic..

Real-Time Economy (RTE) Community has won the World Summit Award (WSA) Finland 2009. The award was received at the 12th International MindTrek Conference in Tampere, Finland, on 8 October 2008. According to the jury RTE Community rises to the challenge of proceeding towards a real-time economy necessitated by the complexity and uncertainty of the contemporary society.

The WSA was started in the framework of the United Nations (UN) World Summit on Information Society as an initiative from Austri..