"When it came to selecting a service for sending electronic bills, compliance with legal requirements and ease of use were particular important to us. It is a great relief for us that we merely need to enter the e-mail address of the bill recipient to change over to digital sending."
Werner Pietruschka Head of Commercial IT.
Company
Hartmetall-Werkzeugfabrik Paul Horn GmbH
Location: Tübingen
Employees: 1,100 worldwide (800 in Tübingen)
Internet: www.phorn.de
Industry sector
Precision tool manufacturing
Challenges
- Digital or physical sending of bills, depending on customer preference
- Making savings in terms of printing and process costs
- Rapid and uncomplicated implementation at low investment costs
- Guaranteed compliance with legal directives
Solution
- Introduction of regibill® as a solution for electronic billing in compliance with the legal requirements
- Integration in the existing output management system
Advantages
- Simplified and faster delivery of bills
- High savings potential for both sender and recipient
- Digital and physical bills in one billing run
Paul Horn GmbH (Horn) has been developing and producing grooving, side turning and slot milling tools since 1969 and is one of the market leaders in this segment. Its tools are employed in a wide range of industries including the automotive sector, mechanical engineering and the aerospace industry. The printing and logistics costs for billing the approximately 9,000 customers were very high.
At the beginning of the year, the company announced plans to digitalise the billing process after identifying the potential to save costs. When electing a suitable solution, Horn's priorities were on the legal compliance and ease of use of the system. German companies have been permitted to send electronic bills without a qualified digital signature since 2011. Nevertheless, compliance with certain legal and fiscal obligations is still essential. This includes authentication of the sender's identity and the possibility to check the integrity of the bill for a period of ten years.
Smooth changeover
Horn decided on regibill®, a service offered by the regify Group, which is specialised in services covering all aspects of confidential and binding e-mail communication and digital post. One of the decisive factors was the fact that regibill® can be simply integrated in the existing output management application. "The integration was simple. The differentiation between digital and paper sending functions completely automatically", explained Werner Pietruschka, Head of Commercial IT at Horn. "We merely had to add the customers' e-mail addresses to the bill." The output management system then detects immediately that the bill is to be sent electronically. The recipient receives his legally compliant bill via e-mail as a PDF and can validate it if necessary. If the bill does not include the recipient's e-mail address, it is printed, put in an envelope and posted in the traditional way. This allows gradual migration from paper to digital without any problems.
In response to our first correspondence, 30% of Horn's customers agreed to receiving their bills electronically. "In order to be well received, it is important that the changeover is possible without the recipient needing to install any special software", said Holger Born, DACH Sales Manager of the regify Group.
Faster billing at lower costs
Horn is particularly satisfied with the electronic billing system because it helps save costs, as printing and putting into envelopes are rendered unnecessary. In addition, the period between issuing and receipt of the bill is also considerably reduced. "While the entire delivery process of physical letters usually takes three to four days, Horn can now achieve delivery times of just three to four minutes with this electronic delivery system", said Pietruschka. "Based on the positive feedback already received from our customers, we hope to increase our electronic billing quota to above 90 percent in the near future."
Mr Pietruschka, why did Paul Horn GmbH decide to introduce electronic billing?
For a medium-sized company like ours, monthly billing involves a lot of time and effort. Digital billing renders printing and putting into envelopes unnecessary. This protects the environment and saves resources in terms of printers, ink and paper. As we send several thousand bills every month, this also has a positive effect on our cost structure.
How has the step been received by your customers?
The feedback has been thoroughly positive. Many of our customers agreed to the electronic delivery of bills immediately and are very satisfied with this change. The important element is that it does not require any additional organisational or technical efforts on the customers' part, as the regibill® process complies with the legally required authentication of the sender's identity and integrity of the bill.
How important were security and legal conformity to you in the digitalisation?
We set great store by both aspects in order to ensure our customers continue put their trust in us in the future. That's why we had ourselves authenticated as a regify provider and consequently are registered as a bill issuer with our identification details such as our tax identification number. This ensures compliance with all the legal and fiscal obligations. For our customers it is important to be able to check at any time by means of an online portal that their bills are available and have not been modified. In addition, they also benefit from the fact that thanks to regibill® they do not need to employ additional archiving on expensive, unchangeable storage media. For customers looking for even more security, we also have the possibility of sending the regibill® bills completely encrypted from end to end.