4.3.2009 Dimes boosts e-invoicing in the EU

Social media think tank to drive e-services and related technologies

Helsinki, Finland, 16 March 2009 - Dimes (Digital Media Service Innovations – Finland), the nationwide initiative that fosters the development of Finnish technology expertise into services and business, is one of the prime movers behind The Finnish Real-Time Economy (RTE) program. The program drives the transforming of all money and payment transfers into electronic format.

The first phase of the program focuses on driving an EU-wide electronic invoicing concept as a key productivity enhancement and support of the migration to the Single European Payment Area (SEPA). The second phase - Full Value Chain includes e-orders, e-confirmations and other commercial documents to e-invoicing and payments. The recently started third phase, Fully Integrated Accounting, focuses on research and solutions enabling automated and real time accounting. The next phases will provide solutions for more efficient enterprise risk mitigation and sustainability accounting.

“In the era of internet it is important that IT and business processes, traditional as well as new collaborative ones, work in real time. The Real Time Economy program addresses the big picture in order to demonstrate how the parts both on their own and especially when combined provide an immense value for the central stakeholders. It also encourages service providers and users to move forward quicker. The next step is e-invoicing – an area where annual cost saving potential has been estimated to exceed 200 billion euros and the CO2 reduction potential 2.8 million tons,” says Bo Harald, Chairman of the EU Expert Group for E-invoicing.

Real-Time Economy is an open program; all interested parties are welcome to participate in the development and innovation of new technologies and real-time processes. A social media community, the Real-Time Economy Community, has been founded as a discussion and innovation forum for furthering e-services and related technologies.

"We want to be open. Our discussion forum is expanding rapidly, and numerous excellent ideas have already emerged. New members and ideas are more than welcome," says RTE program Project Coordinator Tuija Lompolojärvi.
 
Funded by Tekes, the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation, the RTE program is run by Dimes, Tieto Inc. and the Helsinki School of Economics; the latter has established a Real-Time Economy competence center, which conducts research related to the implementation of information technology that aims at real-time business processes. The program also cooperates with the Helsinki University of Technology and the recently established Aalto University.

"Finland has a thirty-year history of e-banking and profound understanding of how to develop concepts and services for economy. We should continue to be a global laboratory for real time and automated financial value chain operations and put the results at the disposal of ongoing and future work in EU. The RTE program and community are brilliant examples how the public and private sectors have intensified their cooperation to develop technologies to benefit everyone," said Kimmo Ojuva, President of Dimes Association.

The RTE community represents Finland in the UN World Summit Awards, held in Mexico in June.

Please visit the community at http://realtimeeconomy.net/.

Further information:

Real-Time Economy program
project coordinator
Ms. Tuija Lompolojärvi
Tel. +358 44 051 8689
ext. tuija.lompolojarvi (at) tieto.com

Dimes Association
Mr. Kimmo Ojuva, President
Tel. +358 400 525 845
kimmo.ojuva (at) dimes.fi

About the Real-Time Economy community
The Real-Time Economy community was developed as a part of the Tekes (Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation) Real-Time Economy program, jointly developed by eg. the Helsinki School of Economics, Tieto, Inc., The Federation of Finnish Enterprises, numerous Finnish banks, the Confederation of Finnish Industries, TIEKE Finnish Information Society Development Centre Dimes Association and Dicole, Inc. In the Real-Time Economy community, people share their ideas, stories and practical case examples on how digitalization, real-time processes, and new ways of working are transforming organizations large and small.

About Dimes Association
Dimes (Digital Media Service Innovations – Finland) is a nationwide initiative that fosters the development of Finnish technology expertise into services and business. The association offers an active, non-affiliated forum that brings together companies of all sizes and organizations in the public sector. Dimes supports the development of Finland's information society services and internationally competitive businesses. Additionally, the association promotes closer collaboration between industry players and represents Finland in technology organizations of the European Union. The association was founded in 2005 by Nokia, TietoEnator, Elisa, Finnet and YLE. Dimes currently has over 70 member companies. For further information, please visit www.dimes.fi.