The Euro Banking Association (EBA) has recently held the first meeting of Supply Chain Working Group (SCWG). The aim of this group is to build on the excellent work done by the E-Invoicing Working Group and take the concepts further to study the physical and financial supply chain models with a view of  detailing how Supply Chain Finance (SCF) can be supported on these models.

One of the outputs of this work will be a “Guide to Supply Chain Finance” which will help establish common concepts and a common language defining SCF.  It will illustrate how e-invoicing and the dematerialization of business documents supports better management of working capital and liquidity, the provision of optimal financing structures, and the tighter control of payables/receivables.

There is a whole new world of financial services waiting to be developed on the back of a critical mass of real time dematerialized business transactions. A new market of effective and efficient SCF services will be enabled by a pan-European network of collaborating and interoperating e-invoicing service providers.

These new services will provide benefits to the corporate world that dwarf the often cited, immediate and obvious cost benefits for e-invoicing.  I certainly look forward to tracking the progress of this work.