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Author: Manoj Ranaweera

Entrepreneurs: An Evening with Karan Bilimoria, founder of Cobra Beer

Karan Bilimoria, Founder of Cobra Beer and TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs) UK Board Member is expected to deliver an inspiring lecture at Manchester Business School on 21 June 2006. It was scarcely 15 years ago that Karan Bilimoria made a choice that would change his life forever. Spotting a gap in the beer market between the fizzy lagers and heavy ales that clogged the shelves – and paired poorly with food – Karan came up with an entirely new idea: Cobra. Specially brewed to be smoother and less gassy than regular lagers, Cobra is the perfect accompaniment to all foods…

Why I have not blogged recently?

Having blogged for two months at http://manojranaweera.blogspot.com, I got to the point where I found the presentation of my blogging pages no longer acceptable. This was as a result of looking at blogs written in WordPress. My first blog was written in and hosted by Blogger.com. At the same time, I felt that there need to be more focus on marketing of ebdex. I also want to continue to speak about the industry and the pain and joy I am experiencing whilst getting ebdex off the ground to deliver our strategic plans. So on one crazy night I ended up…

EIPP: Another SaaS EIPP – InoviumPay Central

In May 2006, Inovium Corp. announced the launch of InoviumPay Central, an electronic billing and payment system designed for businesses that currently accept credit cards payments. Built-in functionality includes payment scheduler, electronic submission of all invoices, integration and batch uploading to any major accounting system, and full management control and reporting, allowing the company to streamline operations and free up labor. The solution is offered free to any company or organization worldwide utilizing their existing merchant card provider for a limited period.

ICAEW Survey 2006 – Use of e-Invoicing within the surveyed businesses

Based on a survey sample of 1012 businesses in UK, 69% have said that their invoicing systems are not integrated with their own accounting systems. Among those who have integrated, only 10% achieved seamless data exchange between their own systems. It seems that the survey has not collected data on exchange of invoices electronically between organisations (suppliers and buyers). One can assume this might be close to 0%. Another figure from the report shows 14% of the businesses using e-invoicing at present, with another 9% planning to implement such solutions within the next 2 years. Once again there is no…

Dennis Howlett – The master Blogger on accountancy, enterprise and integration software

Dennis Howlett is one of the few individuals who influenced me to start this blog in early April 06. I have been a keen reader of Accman Pro since start of my blog. It seems Den also runs two other blogs, these being Enterprisey and Integration Monitor (perhaps there is more..). Den speaks about anything and everything in Accman Pro, whilst Enterprisey as the name suggests is more geared towards enterprise software, and Den was kind enough to mention ebdex recently. Some of the other subjects Den covers in Den’s Enterprisey Foghorn include Business integration, Business intelligence, Compliance, Enterprise Web…

Article 5: Another Introduction to ebdex Document Exchange

ebdex Document Exchange is a Business-to-Business (B2B) solution that sits between various accounting and enterprise software systems used by companies, automatically allowing these disparate systems to ‘talk’ to each other and transmit all manner of structured documents, without manual handling. It requires no capital spend by users in order to adopt it into use, requires no user set-up or annual contract charges, but relies simply on a range of ‘pay-as-you-go’ pricing plans, with each transaction costing less than a 1st class stamp. (Disclaimer: ebdex reserves the right to charge for integration costs, and trading partner recruitment and enrolment costs). It…

Zansibar – The Technology relationship

What an awful picture? Surely, the UK Government can afford a better image than this to describe the complex arrangements between public sector buyers and suppliers of products and solutions through its multi million £ web based hosted and management e-Commerce platform (I know there is a slighly better image elsewhere)! I assume you have heard about Zansibar Project. I did some research today to find out the technology house behind this public sector solution and thought of sharing it with you. Basically, OGCbuying.solutions (on behalf of Executive Agency of the Office of Government Commerce in the Treasury) has signed…

Great debate about Supply Chain Management vs. Spend Mangement

There is a great debate taking place within number of prominent North American blogs about supply chain management vs. spend management. These being, Tim Minahan’s Supply Excellence, Jason Busch’s Spend Matters. Dave Stephens’ Procurement Central and Dave Bush’s eSourcing Forum. There may well be others.. In UK, procurement and supply chain management are the terms most commonly used. Spend Management is used by Ariba and Marrakech. Obviously, if we consider US terminalogy, Electronic Invoice Presentment and Payment (EIPP) forms part of the “spend management” solutions (as far as Ariba and perhaps others are concerned). What about “financial supply chain management”?…

Article 4: What business are we in? Document Exchange or EIPP

Very interesting question! The competitive landscape changes according to the response given. What is the primary business of ebdex? We are in the business of allowing organisations to exchange structured documents with their trading partners (suppliers, customers, partners, resellers, etc) utilising investments already made in technology (no need for new hardware or software licenses). This is achieved by integrating with accounting/ERP/CRM/other systems at both ends of a transaction through ebdex Document Exchange. Another way to put this is: if system A has structured documents and these documents are required by System B, then ebdex is interested in reading from System…

Open Source Software vs. Sun Microsystems

Is Open Source software really free? My limited knowledge suggests you still have to pay for support. Same can be said for record beating Solaris 10 from Sun Microsystems (in fact all Sun Software is free and you just pay for support). So now you have a real choice. Sun offers an alternative to Windows with the Solaris Enterprise System, a unified platform of Solaris 10, Java Enterprise System, developer tools, desktop infrastructure and N1 management software. Sun claims “Solaris 10 includes more than 600 features that make it the most efficient, secure, and reliable operating system ever built“. Sun…