eInvoicing Adoption Leaders Group minutes – 8 May 2023

Meeting details

Date

• Monday, 8 May 2023

Time

• 2:00pm to 3:30pm (Auckland, Wellington)
• 12:00pm to 1:30pm (Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney)

Locations

• Room WS-1.10, Westpac, 16 Takutai Square, Auckland Central
• Room L03 01T, MBIE, Pastoral House, 25 The Terrace, Wellington
• Microsoft Teams

Attendence

Chair

• Stewart McRobie, Deputy Chief Executive Corporate & Finance, Accident Compensation Corporation **

Host

• Quintin Pretorius, Senior Manager, Operations Enablement, Westpac New Zealand *

Members

• Ethan Tan, NZ Finance Manager – Commercial, Bunnings NZ *
• Graham Young, Head Shared Services – Finance, Datacom *
• Andrea Blackie, Deputy CFO, Fisher & Paykel Healthcare *
• Terry Patterson, Head of Business Process Improvement, Fletcher Building *
• Chris Greenough, Director, Global Service Operations, Fonterra *
• Murray Trim, Decision Support Manager, Foodstuffs South Island
• Emma Dobson, Independent
• Steven Jefferies, Financial Controller KPMG + *
• Helen Peters, Group Financial Controller, Meridian Energy
• Helen Lea, Chief Employment Experience Officer and Government Policy Lead, MYOB
• Jane Foote, Chief Information Officer, NXP +
• Natalie Bishop, Head of Treasury, One NZ *
• Matthew Sheppard, Financial Controller, Spark NZ *
• Lee Talbot, Tribe Lead – Enterprise Services *
• Justin Brochocki, Head of Property & Commercial Services, Westpac
• Michael Nyamudeza, Finance Operations Manager, Wellington City Council
• Neil Padley, Head of Finance Shared Services – Corporates, Woolworths (Countdown)
• Maureena Van der Lem, Head of Government Experience, Xero
• Simon Foster, General Manager, eInvoicing

Observers

• Andrew Cooke, Product Manager, MBIE **
• Grace Riley Promotion Advisor, MBIE *
• Linda More, Manager Marketing & Communications, MBIE **
• Lisa Ringleff, Senior Relationship Manager, MBIE *
• Mark Wierzbicki, General Manager eInvoicing, MBIE *
• Michael Alp, Deputy Secretary Finance and Performance, MBIE *
• Roshan Pandey, Senior Relationship Manager (Secretariat), MBIE *

Apologies

• Bryan Gillespie, Senior Finance Manager, ANZ
• Peter Gudsell, CFO, Auckland Council
• John Bishop, Treasurer and Manager, CCO Governance & External Partnerships
• Aaron Smith, CFO, 2Degrees +
• Jeremy Eugenio, CFO, One NZ (substitute attended) 
• Chris Rowe, CFO, Fonterra (substitute attended)
• Nathan Marsh, CFO, Foodstuffs SI (substitute attended)
• Andy Dunlop, Financial Controller, FCM (Flight Centre) +
• Mike Roan, CFO, Meridian Energy (substitute attended)
• Alan Carnaby, Adoption Manager, MBIE
• Rhonda Richardson, CFO, NZ Post
• Ben Norrie, CFO, OfficeMax +
• Tania O'Brien, CFO, Westpac (substitute attended) 
• Andrea Reeves, CFO, Wellington City Council (substitute attended)

Attended online via MS Teams: 9 members

* Attended in person at Auckland: 15 (10 members + 5 MBIE staff)

** Attended in person at Wellington: 4 (2 members + 2 MBIE staff)

+ New organisations: 6 members

Minutes

Administration

• New member organisations were introduced.
• There was a roundtable of introductions and all members introduced themselves.
• Most of the member organisations confirmed they are either live with eInvoicing or expect to be live in the coming months.
• The minutes from the previous meeting were approved.
• The Chair noted that the meeting is being documented to capture high level actions or decisions. Comments will not be attributed to individuals or organisations. Minutes will be published on eInvoicing.govt.nz.

General

MBIE presented their most recent dashboard and informed members they are seeing strong month on month growth fuelled by communication to suppliers and one on one engagements. An overview of adoption progress was also given.

Updates from member orgranisations

• A member organisation has selected an Access Point Provider (APP) and are finalising their integration. They are working with suppliers to prepare their procurement system and are planning to remove manual handling of some of their invoices.
• A member organisation has almost finished activating their system to receive eInvoices and will start reaching out to their suppliers soon. They will investigate how to send eInvoices in July.
• A member organisation has been accessing eInvoicing for over 2 years and have been receiving eInvoices. They are looking into how to utilise Peppol to share documents.
• A member organisation is going through an ERP upgrade and plan to roll out eInvoicing receive functionality in 3 stages. They are currently sending about 200 eInvoices a day via one of their subsidiaries. 
• A member organisation has recently upgraded their ERP system and are in the process of choosing an APP. They have assigned a project team and are committed to go live later this year.
• A member organisation is currently receiving around 300 eInvoices per week and plan to increase the number of suppliers sending to them.
• A member organisation is part way through an ERP system upgrade and plan to go live next year. They expect to significantly reduce the number of paper invoices they receive.
• A member organisation is implementing eInvoicing via a mail house and are remediating some data challenges. Their counterpart in Australia has been sending a large volume of eInvoices to date. They plan to follow in their footsteps.
• A member organisation is undertaking testing and plan to bypass their ERP system in the future. Other IT projects are currently limiting progress. They are currently sending a small amount of eInvoices to Government agencies.
• A member organisation is commencing their implementation and expect to be enabled by early 2024. Developing a compelling business case and data cleansing were noted as challenges they are aiming to overcome. 
• A member organisation has been enabled to send for 3 years now and have been sending eInvoices to some of their customers.
• A member organisation has been sending and receiving eInvoices since 2021/2022. They will continue to improve their product offering by continuous learning via feedback from their suppliers and customers.
• A member organisation has selected an APP and is undergoing testing. They plan to work with their customers who have expressed an interest in eInvoicing.
• A member organisation is part way through a significant ERP consolidation and upgrade project. This is expected to be complete in 3 and a half years. Their first go-live date will be June this year and they will look to promote this to their suppliers. They have raised interest on understanding benefits from eInvoicing.
• A member organisation is overcoming challenges with their bespoke EDI system. As a result, their timeline has increased.
• A member organisation is supportive of eInvoicing. They will look into how they can implement eInvoicing in an end-to-end P2P system in the next 2 years. 
• A member organisation is reviewing business case and are taking feedbacks from other members on implementation challenges.

Actions required

• Action point 1
  How to successfully create a business case to gain buy-in with ROI.

• Action point 2
  How can eInvoicing positively impact the P2P process and how can this be achieved along with supporting document attachments?

• Action point 3
  How to overcome organisational and technological challenges?

Meeting closed at 3:30pm