Over the last +15 years PEPPOL (Pan-European Public Procurement Online) has developed from at small but ambitious project headed by the European Commision to be a broadly accepted infrastructure for Business Transactions. Though fostered in Europe, PEPPOL are now broadly accepted around the World. Many countries around the globe are mandating eInvoicing based on PEPPOL technology.
Governance
PEPPOL are a set of definitions that forms both the eDelivery Infrastructure, the Directory Service and all the Business Transaction Syntaxes. The overall Governance are delivered by the OpenPEPPOL Organization. All Service Providers who wants to utilized PEPPOL as a Multilateral Infrastructure, must enter a formal Agreement with a local PEPPOL Authority. This Agreement contains a series of rules including a Service Level Agreement. If the quality delivered by a Service Provider are incompliant with the Agreement, the local PEPPOL Authority can exclude the Service Provider from the infrastructure.
eDelivery
PEPPOL are basicly a Peer-to-Peer infrastructure where two Service Providers can exchange their clients Business Transactions in a secure way. Exchanges are ruled by the Directory, where the Receiving Company can be found including digital capabilities and information about the actual Service Provider.
The PEPPOL eDelivery logic are based on the 4-corner model. Buyer and Seller are Corner 1 and Corner 4 and they have a Business Agreement, setting the rules for their cooperation. Buyer and Seller are free to choose any Service provider to handle syntaxes, onboardings, eDelivery operation, Support etc. So Buyer are having one Service Provider and Seller might have another Service Provider. The Service Providers forms Corner 2 and 3. Both Service Providers are having a Legal Agreement with the local PEPPOL Authority.
Syntax
All transactions exchanged in PEPPOL are defined in the PEPPOL BIS syntax. Beyond the actual transaction (invoices, orders, order responses etc.) PEPPOL also covers responses so a receiving company can reply to Sender, if any issue should be present.
The syntax are XML based and are compliant with the CEN standard - EN 16931 - which are the basic requirement in the European Directive for eInvoicing and therefor also is a requirement in national mandates in Europe. The sematics are aligned with UN Cefact so each individual data field are having a content and a description that are aligned with UN Edifact. This alignment enables easy mapping between different syntaxes where nessecary and will also make life much easier where a company are having Business Partners using different eDelivery infrastructures and different syntaxes.
How to utilize PEPPOL
Normally an end-user (Buyer or Seller) would not use PEPPOL directly. Typically the end-user will use a Service Provider who are having an End-Point on PEPPOL to exchange messages. The services offered to the end-user are therefore individual and are defined in the agreement between the End-user and the actual Service Provider.
What are the benefits?
There are several benefits with the PEPPOL Infrastructure
- Due to the PEPPOL Registry, it is easy to lookup Business Partners who are ready for Digital Business
- The Multilateral design, enables a much more efficient onboarding than most other infrastructures
- The PEPPOL BIS syntax comes with a Schematron tool where the individual business transaction can be verified. The Schematron validation are mandatory for the Service Provider to use, before a transaction are handed over to the reciever. The Schematron validation enables a very high data quality in the PEPPOL Infrastructure and if any error should occur in a transaction - it cannot be transferred to the receiver. It is very important for the reciever that the incomming data are having as high data quality as possible.
- PEPPOL are available in more than 40 countries with +1.6 million receivers defined. Your business partners might already be there!
Want to know more?
- Call Y-Con for a consultation
- Or go to The Future Is Open - OpenPeppol