14 Juni 2014
This week I participated in the GS1 electronic invoice practice day with Konik. Looking back on the event, it was full of talks related to electronic invoicing, many of which placed an emphasis on ZUGFeRD. The only two presented business cases did not include ZUGFeRD. During the break I did not have time to ask the two speakers if they had any plans to integrate ZUGFeRD into their electronic invoice process. I plan to catch up with them via E-mail and post results of the conversation.
What pleasantly surprised me was the large number of visitors. Going through the list of around 90 participants, I recognized more than half of the participants were end users mainly interested in ZUGFeRD. From the IT side, some companies were already working with or investigating ZUGFeRD for their projects.
The atmosphere was mainly dominated by people waiting for the first release with the hope of a general ZUGFeRD success before ramping up their projects. Also interesting was the fact that I did not see many ERP companies, but mostly backup and CMS vendors. Participants sometimes criticized the lack of PR for ZUGFeRD, especially among tax consultants.
Everyone is waiting for a ZUGFeRD success to minimize risk, while at the same time hoping for success because the demand is high. I personally think that with the Konik library the investment costs can be kept at a low level, which also means that it is a low risk and minimal effort to implement ZUGFeRD-compliant invoicing for vendors and end users.