DS CWA 16049:2009

Assessing new business processes and technologies for eInvoicing

Scope

The present CEN Workshop Agreement gives guidance for the assessment of new technologies and business processes. The result of the assessment is a high-level (approximate) analysis on how technologies and business processes can be integrated into the eInvoicing environment. The analysis shows the compliance with (legal and organisational) requirements - or the according gaps - and gives guidance for implementation to the business community. These requirements include Value Added Tax (VAT) legislation but are not limited to it. They comprehend accounting, company and commercial law, as well as any other kind of regulation. Therefore, the assessment guidelines are not only aimed at implementing VAT-compliant eInvoicing, but at eInvoicing in general. The methodology chosen consists of following a few well-defined steps. It consists of comparing the new technologies or business processes against a framework describing the eInvoicing environment.
The framework consists of four abstraction layers which
- contain the terminology to be used,
- show the interrelation with the basic interaction models in place,
- allow that any new process steps can enhance, replace or seamlessly be integrated into existing processes,
- allow to identify the process steps where a certain new technology can be applied to.
In order to achieve a practice-oriented procedure and a short learning curve the methodology follows a bottom-up approach. The assessment starts with the investigation of the specific properties of the new technology or business process and then positions these properties against the framework by comparing them step by step with the said abstraction layers bottom-up.
This CWA aims at European eInvoicing professionals as target audience. The framework allows to categorise the different aspects of eInvoicing in order to assess developments in eInvoicing, may they be the application of new technologies or the adaptation and customisation of business processes. (...)