Accounting software drives me mad!

A few years ago, when setting up the business, I decided to buy a well-known accounting software package because I wanted to be able to easily share my accounting records with my accountant, who also used the same program. I mistakenly thought that accounts programs were pretty much similar in function. I mean we are only talking about tracking basic financial transactions aren’t we?

Accounting software is not just about making sure the statutory company accounts are prepared but providing management information so I can run the business effectively. The program I bought takes three steps when only one step is really necessary. The conclusion I have reached is that the software has simply replaced the old manual accounting process. I have shared my thoughts on this with the company concerned and they have assured me their latest program is better. If they haven’t got it right by version 14 I somehow doubt it will be much different now.

Anyway, I am now looking out for a new accounts package. This time I am looking for something that has a far better interface, easier to use and allows me to share my data, not just with an accountant that uses the same software but any accountant I choose. Standards support in packages is important to me. I have only just started my research but there are worrying signs. I want to issue electronic invoices to my clients and receive them from my suppliers. I am not talking about PDF or emails here. I am talking about real Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), structured data that easily be shared between different accounting packages. Standards support for things like eInvoicing is weak. When I asked one company what standards their software supported they told me that they supported one particular one and they don’t have many requests for this functionality. To be fair to that company this is a common response to this type of question. Maybe there is an opportunity here for another company to develop a simple ‘translator’. Anyone fancy investing?

Is Apple really sabotaging an open standard?

I read the recent ZDNet article How Apple is sabotaging an open standard for digital books with some interest. Can a company actually sabotage an open standard?

Apple have developed a digital book that is far richer and interactive than previous digital books. Apparently Apple have extended the EPUB format and therefore broken it. So they have taken the open standard and presumably adopted the same principles and underlying technologies in the existing standard to support their new digital books. That doesn’t seem so bad. They could have invented something completely new. The reality is that most changes to a published standard are likely to create problems of backward compatibility.

I cannot think of any company, wishing to capitalise on its own intellectual property, that would want to signal those intentions by requesting a change to an existing open standard before product release and the logical conclusion of the ZDNet article is that all digital book readers should only support the official EPUB standard. That would mean no progress in this area.

The question is whether Apple will contribute their extensions to the community and make them ‘open’ in a new version of the EPUB standard. The custodians of the EPUB standard, the International Digital Publishing Forum, already recognises that the standard needs further development. So maybe this will happen. Let’s see before jumping to any conclusions.

CEN ‘Core’ Cross Industry Invoice European Message Implementation Guideline

The European Committee for Standardization, CEN, today announced the opening of the Public Review for the ‘Core’ Cross Industry Invoice European Message Implementation Guideline. The guideline is due to be published as a CEN Workshop Agreement (CWA) in the autumn.

The Expert Group on e-Invoicing (EG), in its end-2009 final report, recommended that a common invoice content standard and data model, based on the UN/CEFACT Cross-Industry Invoice (CII), should be adopted. The EG recommended the development of a reference semantic data model to clarify the European context, in particular to make sure that those implementing this technical solution in Europe will be able to use it in a correct context. The ‘Core’ Cross Industry Invoice European Message Implementation Guideline is the result of that development.

The guide is in two parts. Part one describes the business requirements and data model for an electronic invoice that can be used in the most common invoicing situations. Part two maps those requirements to the UN/CEFACT CII XML standard.

The draft CWA, comments made by participants in the three CEN Workshops involved in this project that have already processed during the drafting of the guide, a comment form and full details are available at http://www.cen.eu/cen/Sectors/Sectors/ISSS/Activity/Pages/MUG.aspx

If you are involved in the implementation of e-Invoicing in Europe you are encouraged to review the draft and submit your comments. The Public Review period ends on 31st July 2011.

Partnering, BIM and all that stuff

In his blog, Partnering, is it working?, Derek Mynott suggests that in a commercial world it will always be the lowest price that wins and that partnering and collaboration isn’t working in construction. He goes on to say everyone is looking after their own business interests and some big barriers are going to have to be broken down to make true partnering a reality. His conclusion is that there will be that cultural change once Building Information Models (BIM) comes into its own.

It is not that BIM is the catalyst to this cultural change. There is more going on.

There is a need to drive down the cost of managing and processing the vast amounts of information that the construction and ongoing maintenance of a building requires. The catalyst for change has been the financial cut backs and lack of funding for construction projects. We are going to have to do the same with a lot fewer resources so, after a fairly lengthy period when commercial pressures have not been so great, the industry has to find a better way to work. In recent years partnering/collaboration was a ‘nice-to-have’ but now it is going to be essential for survival and growth. Companies and organisations that embrace true collaboration, and find ways to remove some of the barriers, will be the ones that come out of the current financial situation, stronger and better.

The technologies that support BIM, and the ability to share structured information other than PDFs, documents and spreadsheets, have been around for some time. As the construction industry came out of the last recession in the early 90s it was the same need to drive down the cost of managing information that led to the formation of CITE (Construction Industry Trading Electronically) which is now part of BuildingSMART UK, the ‘custodians’ of BIM. In the case of CITE the standard that allowed the exchange of Bills of Quantities, for example, was a  ‘closed standard’, only CITE members could easily get a copy and think about implementing it. All that has changed. We now work in a world of ‘open standards’ and the CITE standards, like the standards that support BIM, are also open. UN/CEFACT has published an ‘open’ eTendering standard that supports the exchange of Bills of Quantities.

We also now have the ability to connect and engage through the use of Social Media and a whole raft of tools for collaboration are available to us. The technology is here, now.

If you want to stay in business and grow, then collaboration has to be on the agenda and you are going to have to accept that ‘giving away’ or sharing information is not that much of a problem. You will gain a lot more than you lose if you share. Construction companies and professionals have to ask themselves are they in the business of managing information or should they be focusing on adding value to, and interpreting information used in the construction process?

Cultural change may happen when BIM comes into its own but it is when the construction industry recognises the true value of collaboration and sharing that cultural change will happen.

PAS91:2010 Is it going to work?

In October 2010 the British Standards Institution (BSI) published a Publically Available Specification (PAS) to address the requirements for construction related procurement pre-qualification questionnaires. PAS 91:2010 was a joint effort by a number of key construction organisations that have agreed on a common set of questions for pre-qualification documentation in construction tendering. It will enable a consistent approach to the assessment of responses which should ensure a fair evaluation of the capabilities of a supplier.

So what can we expect?

Most of the questions are Yes/No with a requirement to provide supporting documentation so there will be a qualitative assessment of the answers. Assessment providers will continue to provide consistent evaluation, and scoring of those answers, which will mean that buyers should be able to evaluate scores from different assessment providers more easily. From a suppliers perspective answering the same questions in different assessment schemes will make the process of completing the forms more efficient through familiarity. However the PAS does not address the situation of having to subscribe to several assessment provider schemes and having, for example, to re-enter the same information and upload the same documents, to each provider’s web site. That would still have to happen.

In the introduction to PAS 91 it is stated that its adoption ‘will help to streamline tendering processes by: … increasing consistency between various pre-qualification databases;’ but that then goes on to say that the PAS specifies the ‘what’ and not the ‘how’. Although we shouldn’t underestimate the benefits of answering the same questions, and the opportunity for more consistent evaluations, taking a closer look at the ‘how’ could actually mean greater benefits can be achieved from standardisation at the data level, and further help in streamlining the tendering process.

There has already been work in this area in UN/CEFACT, the United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business, with the publication of an eTendering Standard in 2007, an ‘open’ standard for worldwide use. One of the ‘messages’ defined in that standard is called ‘Pre-qualification Application’. It describes the standardised format for a lot of the information that is requested in a Pre-Qualification Questionnaire but at the moment it does not deal with the requirements of the’ question and answer’ approach in PAS 91:2010. The approach to defining data exchange standards in UN/CEFACT is to define data ‘building blocks’ called Core Components that can be reused in different situations. The addition of some new Core Components to the existing Prequalification Application message will allow support for PAS 91 in the UK but will also allow the same information to be used in cross-border business, potentially making it easier for suppliers to submit applications for projects outside the UK. UN/CEFACT is currently updating the eTendering Standard (to version 2) for publication later this year and is receiving change requests to this standard. If the new version of the UN/CEFACT eTendering Standard supports PAS 91, and assessment providers/software applications implement the standard, then it would be possible for suppliers to submit the same information electronically and automatically without the need to re-enter the information in different web sites.

So is PAS 91 going to work?

Yes it will. The first step in data exchange standards development is to clearly define the business requirements and this is exactly what PAS 91 does, at least for the UK construction industry. That in itself will bring benefits to the industry and is a significant step forward.

The next step is to take those business requirements and map them to a technical solution like UN/CEFACT Core Components and UN/CEFACT XML Schema. This will create more opportunities to streamline the construction tendering process for the benefit of all.

The eTendering Standard from UN/CEFACT deals with a lot more in the tendering process so if you are interested in this area you might want to look at this work. Please contact me for more information.