Newsletter 12/2009
More electronification for financial management
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Real-Time Economy (RTE) is a joint project set up at the Helsinki School of Economics focusing on the electronification of financial-management processes. The activities are coordinated by the virtual Real-Time Economy Competence Center, which started up in 2007.
The Center comprises experts from the Business Technology department and accounting. Also involved is a wide network of service providers operating in the field and users at the EU level. Cooperation is also being constructed with universities in Finland and throughout the world.
The aim of the project is to promote the digitalization of business processes in companies and in society. The operating methods are research, teaching, public impacting and various business ventures with companies.
Primary responsibility - research and teaching
“Information about the opportunities from a real-time economy is distributed in many ways so that companies will start using real-time
The electronification of corporate financial management, which started with e-invoicing, made good progress during 2009.
systems as soon as possible,” says Esko Penttinen, the coordinator of operations at the Center.
“We promote in a practical way electronic payment solutions, e-invoicing and electronic financial management processes. Many of our projects involve not only the user companies but also public management, Finnish banking groups and suppliers of information systems.”
The Center’s primary responsibility is coordinating research and teaching. Practical ventures, such as testing pilot projects and development work, are left to co-partners.
“We are endeavouring to understand practically the benefits and challenges of real-time economy technologies, as we move towards this new world. We also want to produce top-quality academic research and use it to promote an expansion of the real-time economy in Finland.”
Many benefits
The Competence Center distributes information through the online community, where anyone interested can read presentations and research information and take part in discussions.
Ideas and examples of how large and small organizations are transformed by their processes being in real time are shared online.
“The benefits of a real-time economy are great. Productivity improves, costs go down, risks are reduced, service is quicker, management and coordination improve, resources are better utilized and firms operate with greater environmental awareness,” Penttinen says.
He goes on to say that 2009 has been interesting from the perspective of real-time economy management. Many companies and, for example, the Finnish state are requiring their suppliers to invoice them in electronic form by the end of the year.
“These strategic choices will have a big influence on the spread of e-invoicing and consequently on putting the entire financial administration on real time.”
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