Crossgate will extend the scope of its collaboration with SAP in the field of business process outsourcing (BPO). The goal is to make life easier for organizations that want to streamline their financial supply chain, thereby saving money and helping the environment.

In today's fast-paced global economy, companies are finding it difficult to turn sales into cash.  Manually sending paper invoices is slow and expensive, and processes are not integrated among business partners.  Audits and other regulatory compliance efforts are often time-consuming and difficult. When disputes arise, resolving them puts heavy burdens on company resources and delays payment.  These problems may result in inefficient financial supply chains with large amounts of aging and uncollected receivables.  Because predicting cash flow is difficult, the average days sales outstanding (DSO) for most companies is 45 days.  And long cash conversion cycles can translate into significant competitive disadvantages.

E-Invoicing can reduce accounts receivable costs by up to 60 percent. By improving cash management processes and reducing DSO, companies have more cash available to repurchase stock, expand business operations, and reduce debt, all of which have a positive effect on stock price. 

Crossgate, leveraging SAP technology and extending its BPO collaboration with SAP, can now deliver an electronic invoicing service that solves these problems. By replacing paper invoices with electronic data exchange, companies will be able to realize huge savings in time, paper, printing costs, and staffing expenses.  Disputes will be easier and faster to resolve electronically because inbound and outbound processes are integrated between business partners.  Ensuring regulatory compliance will also be simplified using digital signatures and electronic archiving.  In European Union countries, for example, electronic data exchange makes it easier for companies to protect against audits and VAT tax inquiries by simplifying 10-year storage and search requirements. 

"Today, Fortune 1,000 organizations are looking to partner with vendors like Crossgate to accelerate the benefits of electronic invoicing," said Stefan Tittel, founder and CEO, Crossgate AG. "Over the last three years, many finance organizations have recognized that an outsourced solution such as our Business-Ready Network simplifies the management of the legal requirements while lowering the overall cost of implementation and ongoing management.  Through our collaboration with SAP related to BPO, we are helping to solve a key issue for global customers transacting business around the world."

Crossgate's e-invoicing solution leverages a specially configured but standard SAP platform that provides seamless integration with the business processes of buyers and suppliers.  The benefits of e-invoicing go beyond financial benefits by contributing to ongoing green supply chain initiatives to save paper and therefore help the environment. 

"Our objective is to deliver added value to finance and supply chain organizations worldwide by leveraging the capabilities of select service providers," said Gianni Giacomelli, head of Strategy and Marketing, SAP Business Process Outsourcing (BPO). "Crossgate, is able to extend our solutions with a simple but powerful service based on best-in-class SAP technology Powered by SAP NetWeaver in conjunction with business process best practices."

For more information on Crossgate contact, Steve Sprague Steve.Sprague@crossgategroup.com at Crossgate.