Con-Way’s Barretta says she decided to build her EIPP system in-house because she could not find packaged software that met her company’s needs, particularly modules that would be easy to integrate with the existing information security system the company uses to authenticate its online customers. "We’re an Oracle Financials user, and we looked very closely at what they had to offer, but at the time we started building the application they didn’t have what we wanted," says Barretta. "Package add-ons don’t fit into the same security scheme."

But the integration needs didn’t stop there. Her team also had to reproduce the business rules programmed into the system that generates paper invoices so that the electronic bills are sent to the right place on the right schedule. Next, she plans to develop an XML-based application that will allow Con-Way to send invoices directly to customers’ back-end systems (data from the current application comes in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet).

The Bottom Line

Aaron McPherson, research manager with Framingham, Mass.-based IDC (a sister company to CIO’s publisher), thinks it will be easier for companies to achieve the benefits of EIPP once the early adopters set up. "The next group of adopters won’t have to spend as much money," he says, because they can take advantage of the work the EIPP vendors have already done integrating the first group of suppliers and buyers. According to Gartner’s Litan, new EIPP software deployments by billers sending invoices cost around $400,000, not including annual maintenance. She didn’t survey payers using the software to receive invoices because, she says, not enough of them were doing it to obtain adequate survey results.

For now, McPherson says, it’s mainly large companies with a huge billing or payment volume that can justify the investment. At Elemica, McCutcheon thinks he can build critical mass by offering members a standard way to transfer invoice and payment information through the exchange so that they don’t have to set up links with every trading partner. "People aren’t really seeing this as a competitive advantage," says McCutcheon. "It’s an efficiency play."

Says GE’s Hawkins: "It costs us less money to process an electronic invoice. Ultimately, we are not going to have any paper invoices."