Inqipit chooses Docoon PA to enhance its e-procurement solution

Docoon, a leading publisher of digital trust and dematerialization solutions in France, registered as a PDP (Certified Digital Trust Provider), in line with its "partner" strategy, has forged a number of partnerships with ERP and CRM publishers and integrators. Here, we hear from Thibault de la Moissonnière, Director of Research & Consulting at the Puce et Plume group. The group was looking for a PDP-approved partner for its publishing subsidiary Inqipit, one with a thorough understanding of the ins and outs of the electronic invoicing reform.

Hello Thibault de la Moissonnière, can you tell us about Inqipit's activities within the Puce et Plume group?

Thibault de la Moissonnière: Inqipit is a management solutions publisher that supports its clients in their digital transformation by processing and enhancing their data flows. As such, Inqipit offers a suite of complementary applications: e-procurement (1) or procure-to-pay (purchase management), electronic document management (EDM), and electronic voting management with a dedicated platform.

Inqipit is part of the Puce et Plume group, a major player in digitization for 35 years. The group is both a digitization operator (NF 544 certified for faithful digitization and NF 461 certified for archiving with probative value) and an integrator of solutions for processing and enhancing data flows. Today, the Paris-based group has just over 150 employees and generates revenue of €11 million, with double-digit growth for several years. In what context did you decide to start working with Docoon?

T.D.L.M.: As part of its e-procurement offering, Inqipit manages the reconciliation of its customers' invoices: tracking commitments, orders, payments, and associated budgets. With the reform of electronic invoicing, the flow of invoices is diversifying and a new flow is arriving via PDPs (partner dematerialization platforms). It is in this context that we wanted to find a competent partner to be able to offer our customers a solution capable of managing the incoming invoicing flows from start to finish within the framework of the reform.

Thanks to Docoon PDP, Inqipit is expanding its B2P solution by processing structured invoice flows, which are added to our clients' other incoming flows: customer portals, email inboxes, mailboxes, etc. We process all flows as a single point of entry for our customers, regardless of format, making them available to our customers in an EDM or ECM (electronic mail management) tool. For our customers for whom we act as a dematerialization operator and whose invoicing activities are affected by the reform, the Docoon Invoice solution allows us to enhance our value offering.

Why did you choose the Docoon Invoice solution?

T.D.L.M: Before the reform took effect last fall ⁽²⁾, we positioned ourselves as a dematerialization operator (OD). With this new update, we have set ourselves up to become a PDP, and to that end, we are in the process of obtaining ISO 27001 certification. The search for a white label partner allows us to be "time to market." Ultimately, we will be able to use Docoon as a white label.

Very well, but was there a particular factor or criterion that led you to choose Docoon? T.D.L.M.: As an OD, our active participation in working groups led by the DGFiP (French Public Finance Directorate) has enabled us to get to know the various players in the market well. Three criteria led us to choose Docoon:

• Having a contact person capable of organizing a long-term partnership with an organization, teams, and solid capital resources to support the changes brought about by the electronic invoicing reform.
• Work with a partner who is experienced in marketing solutions through an indirect network: publishers, integrators, resellers.
• Establish a collaboration with a player involved in electronic invoicing reform who is not a competitor in our other activities, in order to initiate a partnership on a sound footing.

What benefits do you expect the solution to bring to your customers? T.D.L.M.: The benefits are twofold for our customers, as we are expanding our offering and providing them with a solution that enables them to comply with the electronic invoicing reform.

We are able to offer a simple and flexible solution thanks to Docoon. As a publisher, we integrate Docoon natively into our solutions, since Docoon Invoice allows us to easily connect to our business applications and software via an API platform.

Thanks to Docoon, we are able to offer our customers business continuity. This means that our customers who use our e-procurement and purchasing management solution will see invoices subject to the reform being processed via a PDP in the future. The extracted data will be made available in the same application interface, at no extra cost, without additional technical integration and therefore without any changes.

Beyond ensuring business continuity for our clients, we are expanding our value proposition to companies that do not yet work with us. This reform is an opportunity to reshuffle the deck and gives us the chance to offer our services to other players.

Finally, what sets us apart is that we link purchasing management to budget management by offering our customers an integrated budget module. With Docoon PDP, we can link any incoming invoice to the company's budget, regardless of its source. Our solution thus streamlines exchanges, improves supplier relations, and, above all, increases productivity through controlled decentralization, whether you are an accountant, buyer, or CFO. Finally, for a company's senior management, our tool provides a synoptic view of the company's activity, taking into account committed, actually paid, and invoiced budgets. All company expenses are tracked in real time for better budget monitoring and a reliable audit trail.

What are the next steps?

T.D.L.M.: Firstly, we need to communicate to our customers that we can be their single point of contact for processing supplier invoices as part of the reform. Next, we will finalize the implementation of connectors with the PDP, which is evolving in line with discussions with the tax authorities. This requires ongoing training for our teams so that they can process invoices via the Docoon PDP interface.

We are currently in the start-up phase and everything is going well: the Docoon teams are available, which is very valuable in a changing environment. We know from experience that reforms of this type, involving both private and public sector players, require agility and responsiveness. For the moment, we are very satisfied with our collaboration with Docoon.

Thank you, Thibault de la Moissonnière, for answering our questions!  (1) e-procurement: centralized management of a company's acquisitions and supplies on an electronic platform. (2) On October 15, 2024, in a press release, the government announced that it would no longer offer a free service for sending and receiving documents via the Public Invoicing Portal (PPF). The role of DOs has been reduced, as they can no longer play an active role in transmitting tax data to the administration, an area now reserved for PDPs.