Buyer User Group Highlights 2011

We held our annual EU Buyer User Group at London's Royal Festival Hall. Overlooking the London Eye and River Thames, the room was at capacity with over 100 buyers, suppliers and partners gathered to learn about the OB10 vision, our latest product developments and end-user insights, and updates on the European regulatory landscape. Speaking to customers, the overwhelming view was that it had been a valuable day.

CEO update

CEO Luke McKeever shared his first impressions after seven months at OB10 and talked about what customers could expect to see in the coming months. With a particular focus on improving supplier relations, expanding our work with buyers and increasing our market presence, OB10 is working towards becoming the most recommended global trading network by enabling customers to trade with confidence.

Support news

Alec Holmes, SVP Product Development, talked through how we’re reducing the most common support calls we receive. Top of the list for both OB10 and buyers is ‘when will my invoice be paid?’ By giving us data on the invoice status from their ERPs, buyers are cutting support call volumes by as much as 60% as suppliers can now see for themselves when they’re likely to receive payment.

Unilever Customer Case Study

In a candid presentation, Roland van den Bossche, shared Unilever's eventful e-Invoicing journey and the valuable lessons learnt, including:

• Create top-down governance, cross-functional targets and a cross-functional project team
• Take a co-operative approach with OB10, be aligned on targets and hold regular project meetings
• Work with your service provider to understand what good communications look like

Our supplier panel

A buyer user group wouldn’t be complete without the voice of the supplier. Susie West, CEO at sharedserviceslink.com, facilitated an interactive panel session with Office Team, SmurfitKappa and Premier Farnell, who all spoke frankly about being on the receiving end of an on-boarding campaign and the impact e-Invoicing has had on their businesses.

Prestigious Customer Awards

We closed the day by recognising customers that had made particular advances with e-Invoicing in the past 12 months.

The winners in each category are:

• Most transactions: Dixons Retail Group
• Best refer-to-buyer process: Oracle
• Best on-boarding campaign: Tesco
• Special achievement: Unilever

Dixons Retail Group, Customer Award winner in the category ‘Most transactions’

Presentations

For many, the presentations gave them fresh ideas for taking their
e-Invoicing programmes to the next level. Please click here to download the presentations.

If you're an OB10 customer but were unable to attend, get in touch and we can make the presentations available to you.

See some of the photos from the day and­­ from the pre-event winter warmer.