Implementation of eInvoicing at Gieseke+Devrient

13th March 2023

Giesecke+Devrient (G+D) is a globally operating security technology group headquartered in Munich. As a reliable partner for international customers with the highest demands, G+D provides solutions to secure the essential values of this world. The company develops tailor-made technology with passion and precision in four core areas: payment, connectivity, identities and digital infrastructures.

Even for a hidden champion like Giesecke+Devrient, digitalisation is a crucial topic for further future business success. The transistion to paperless electronic invoicing (eInvoicing) was a further step in the automation of internal billing processes and seamlessly integrates with the company's other digitalisation topics.

Due to G+D's worldwide operations, eInvoicing processes have been implemented in various countries in the B2C and B2B environment to date:

• Italy (FatturaPA)
• Germany (xInvoice & ZUGFeRD)
• Spain (FacturaE & SII)
• Saudi-Arabia (ZATCA)

The requirements in the individual countries essentially arose from two necessities:

• Transmission of legally required documents to the respective state tax authority
• Electronic invoicing to existing customers who, for their part, can already receive electronic invoices

Among other things, existing proprietary third-party solutions were replaced by the SAP's "eDocument Cockpit" solution and the SAP AIF ("Application Interface Framework"). SAP "eDocument Cockpit" allows companies to create electronic documents, e.g. from subsequent documents of invoices. The solution also enables the automated exchange of documents between different systems and partner companies, resulting in a significant reduction of manual inputs and related errors.

Depending on the recipient, the electronic documents are transmitted in encrypted form via various distribution channels:

• PEPPOL (an infrastructure enabling electronic commercial documents such as invoices between companies and public institutions in Europe)
• E-Mail (ZUGFeRD)
• SAP CPI (Cloud Platform Integration)
• Webservices / proxys / APIs

This ensures very flexible reactions to various application scenarios and also to any customer requests for the receipt of invoices.

As implementation partner, consenso set up the SAP standard solution "eDocument Cockpit" and adapted it to Giesecke+Devrient's various business processes. Thus, it could be ensured that the electronic documents created (e.g. in XML format) also contain all process-critical information and arrive at the recipient's side without any errors.

As a result, the transition to eInvoicing facilitates improved compliance by ensuring conformity with regulatory requirements and standards, as well as increased efficiency and productivity thanks to the automation in document creation and management.

(Photo: Giesecke + Devrient GmbH, Munich)