Hewlett Packard Enterprise: Achieving local compliance in 29 countries

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) is one of the world’s leading technology companies with approximately 60 000 team members in offices around the globe. Being structured into business sectors that provide a broad array of products and solutions made it challenging to implement one standardised invoice structure. Diversity of invoice content and layouts, coupled with customer and local market requirements, demanded significant time for administering invoices, and ultimately led HPE to the implementation of Pagero’s e-invoicing services.

“The fact is,” says Mihai Chiriac, Program Manager of the EMEA & APJ e-invoicing program at HPE, “that there are no global standards for business messaging. In almost every case, we need adjustments based on customer or country-specific requirements, which proves very difficult to implement without a vendor like Pagero that performs e-invoicing enrichments.”

The cooperation between HPE and Pagero started in 2008 when the Swedish government introduced requirements for e-invoicing. At the time of the companies started working together, Pagero had started the venture to other Nordic countries and had already begun doing research on the remainder of the EMEA region. The timing worked out well, as HPE soon enough needed e-invoicing services in more countries by the month.

Nazar Paradivskyy, VP Regulatory Affairs at Pagero says, “Working closely with HPE requires that we stay alert and on top of the latest regulatory developments around the world. Keeping our services agile and compliant is key in this age where governments are pioneering new technologies and digital controls. We continuously improve and enhance our offering to be able to cater for HPE needs in 29 countries and counting.”

Chiriac asserts that “Pagero has proven themselves since the very beginning as a progressive company with meticulously competent and knowledgeable staff. Our close interaction and their remarkably service-minded approach far exceed any other providers we have encountered. Whenever we faced challenges during the implementation or technical limitations, Pagero rose to the challenge and came up with a solution!”

HPE is currently using Pagero services in 28 EMEA countries and India, entailing a broad variety of business compliance requirements as well as a number of customer-specific layout demands.

“With the help of Pagero, we have been able to fulfil our invoicing-related tax and legal requirements in all 29 countries where we use them as our e-invoicing service provider. Legal compliance for invoice format and submission are beginning to be mandated by governments, with each mandate bringing a new set of challenges. Countries which have selected the Peppol Infrastructure have been easily implemented. However, other countries like Spain, Italy and India have implemented more complex designs and validation systems, for which Pagero capabilities have shone the best,” Chiriac says.

A steadily increasing number of customers are receiving e-invoices throughout EMEA. HPE has seen a 100% increase in e-invoice transactions every year since 2017. “The fact that governments around the world are beginning to introduce mandatory e-invoicing is definitely showing the growing importance of e-invoicing and the impact that Pagero’s services have had to our company,” says Chiriac.

Within a year, the number of HPE e-invoicing projects increased by 250%. They have almost 3 000 customers in their project database pending implementation in 2020, and 10 000 customers already onboarded for e-invoicing.

“With Pagero, HPE has eliminated the risk of invoice errors. Overall, the invoice turnaround time has been reduced tremendously – within a few hours or even minutes, we know if an invoice has been successfully submitted or rejected. This turnaround time can never be replicated with hardcopy invoicing which can take seven days or more to reach the destination and be accepted by the client,” Chiriac says.

“Working with Pagero and performing customer e-invoicing onboarding is easy. Their solutions are flexible and customisable. I believe that the core competences, ‘know-how’ and the client-oriented attitude that Pagero brings in on a constant basis are the key ingredients that make the relationship between Pagero and HPE reliable and trustworthy,” concludes Chiriac.