Improving Citizen Experience by Leveraging Digital Technology and Transformation

Using Digital Capabilities to Remain Agile and Responsive in a Changing Environment

Embracing the technologies of the day

In our modern world, all industries have or should be embracing the technologies of the digital age. Some have done so in overt and very public ways by changing their entire processes from purely face-to-face experiences, to virtual or hybrid experiences. Without such changes we wouldn’t be able to partake in online shopping and we wouldn’t be able to pay for purchases with the simple tap of a card or a phone. But other changes have been much more subtle and with less fanfare, but no less necessary or important. One such example comes from Main Roads Western Australia. Prashant Singh, the IT Business Partner, says that they are essentially a roads and infrastructure company, but because they are in WA, they are actually “one of the largest geographically spread roads agencies in the world, covering over 2.5 million square kilometres of roads across WA.” They maintain “over 18,600 km of highways and main roads, and manage infrastructure assets valued at over $45 billion.” To do so, they have nine offices spread across the far reaches of the state. 

Like all other agencies and industries, they realised during the pandemic “how central ICT and digital technology become to sustain our lives and livelihoods.” And as part of that, they also realised how important it was to “harness this digital capacity” in both big and small ways. For instance, they are “exploring how automation, cloud and hybrid environments can help Main Roads to realise greater efficiencies and to be more effective and agile.” Overall, it is important in this age to “keep ahead of the digital transformation curve.”

Stepping into the world of eInvoicing

With that in mind, in 2021 Main Roads was chosen by the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) to be part of a pilot program focusing on electronic or eInvoicing. The pilot went well and in July 2022, Main Roads made their “first eInvoice payment.” In Australia, this makes Main Roads “the first government department agency in WA to embrace eInvoicing, and the third jurisdiction behind NSW and Victoria to have the capability.” That capability is managed through a global standard that originated in Europe called Peppol,[1] and is the preferred standard used by the ATO. In fact, the ATO is “the Peppol Authority in Australia, and Australia is one of 34 countries now with this capability.”

Main Roads was chosen in part because “we have almost 6,000 suppliers on our database.” Whilst the intention is not necessarily for all of them to pay using this method, having it as an option will surely increase efficiency in the long-term. In the meantime, “with the tremendous support of the ATO,” they have been able to set up their processes internally. The important part is that both the sender and the recipient of the invoice need to be registered with Peppol so that the invoice “flows through the appropriate access points and through the Peppol standards so that all is documented.” To set up this process, there are “there are 115 requirements, some of which are mandatory, some are desirable and some are optional.” Many of them however were already in place at Main Roads, or were easily attainable, and many were installed during the recent upgrade of the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) platform in 2021, and was in part another reason why Main Roads was chosen for the pilot. However, though the process seems complicated and has a number of moving parts, it fundamentally relies on “good practices in place in terms of financial systems,” and is essentially “a four corner model” that flows seamlessly and is “defined and administered by the Peppol Authority through the ATO.” 

Since both parties need to be registered with Peppol, it somewhat limits the opportunities at present, but currently in Australia “there are almost 11,000 registered suppliers, and across our supplier database, we have 36 suppliers on the Peppol network.” Out of a total of nearly 6,000 this might not sound like a lot, but the intention was to start small and then build up the capability for both senders and recipients. To achieve this initially, Main Roads partnered with both Kofax, a software provider, and Link4, an existing Australian Peppol-certified access point provider. Under the supervision of the ATO, Main Roads worked with both companies to set up their processes. As a result of these collaborations, whether an invoice comes in through an email or is paper-based, “it goes into the scanning processes, bypassing all the manual processes. It is then pushed to our Oracle ERP. This digitisation ensures that the data from the invoice is correct, has been verified and has been authenticated at both ends.” Main Roads already had the scanning and Oracle capability, as well as the data centres and bandwidth to make this happen, though all of these were slightly expanded to ensure compatibility.

The benefits of eInvoicing

Overall, eInvoicing is part of the digital ecosystem and the way of the future. Once fully embraced and taken up by all, it will result in “cost savings, fewer errors, greater reliability and security, a reduction in payment times and it will allow you to connect once and trade with many.” For Main Roads, apart from the opportunity to be ahead of the digital curve, one of the reasons why they were excited by the pilot program was because during the pandemic, there were “many bottlenecks in terms of paying our suppliers.” For small to medium enterprises in particular, “paying suppliers on time is very important for their cash flow.” As such, “we will be continuing to pursue this across all our departments.” In fact, it is likely that over the next few years, “eInvoicing will become mandatory in our federal and state government agencies. More and more agencies are already piloting it and enabling greater digital opportunities.” 

At the moment, eInvoice usage “is less than 1%, but this is very much in line with world standards and with the adoption of new technologies.” No doubt the take-up will become greater over time and it will become standard practice. When that happens and the volume of invoices increases, it will be good to have been an early adopter. 

“When volumes are high, the manual processes associated with them are costly since someone has to physically verify the invoices and the fields. Through eInvoicing, all these processes are removed.”

In fact, from the very first day the program went live in July 2022, “we were able to turn around an invoice in under three hours. That is record time, for sure.” This was a test and it may not always be so quick since not all the elements will always be in place and waiting for the next step, “but given that we have shown that it can be done in three hours, it proves how important it is to harness such technology.” At the very least, because of Peppol and all the standards that came with that, “Main Roads is saving two days of processing of invoices each time.”

The goal now is to “encourage” all of the 36 Peppol-registered suppliers that are part of the Main Roads database to become proficient with eInvoicing “by reaching out to them,” and then to work with Peppol and the ATO to ensure that “other suppliers join the network and the journey, over the coming months and years.”