Becoming a Peppol VAN Operator – How Consulting Companies Can Gain New Revenue Potential

Now more than ever, businesses in the B2B and B2G spheres are looking to reduce administrative costs without hindering the expansion of their operations or compromising security. Often, consulting companies are called in to assess the efficiency of an organization’s business processes, but what is the next step?

For the consulting business, having add-on services that it can offer to the client means that both the client will benefit from utilizing software that makes administrative processes easier, while the consulting service benefits from a new revenue stream. 

In this blog post, we are going to talk about becoming a value-added network (VAN) by adopting Peppol,  a connect once, reach all network and, the new standard for electronic data interchange, based on interoperable globally defined standards. By connecting with Tickstar as a Peppol infrastructure provider,  you have a ready-made solution to offer to clients who transact with both private companies and public sector organizations. We’ll cover: 

What is a VAN? 

Put simply, value-added networks (VAN´s) are services that allow for the secure transfer of data from one party to another. VANs are often used for electronic data interchange (EDI), structured data that can be made interoperable by the VAN operator when one party wants to comply with another country or region’s legal requirements for documentation.

Why not just use email to send documentation from one party to another?

This is a good question. VAN operators have indeed been challenged by the internet’s proliferation of different messaging services, only one of which is email. Consequently, they have upgraded their services, providing add-ons and a greater range of services such as for the Peppo Networkl, as well as heightened security.

This aside, if we take the case of eInvoicing, which makes up a large amount of the official documentation transacted between parties, there are two clear reasons why email is not the preferred medium for document exchange:

As we see it, VAN operators plays an important role in the business environment.

Acting as the intermediary between two parties, Value-added networks can be organized differently depending on specific requirements.

The pandemic, new technology, and the changing nature of projects have contributed to the fact that consulting is no longer as profitable as it used to be. For consulting firms advising other companies on how to better run their operations, having added services that they can provide makes business sense.

Becoming a Peppol VAN operator gives you a tool to assist customers that transact regularly with different trading partners, both domestically and internationally while creating new consulting revenue. To get started, it’s as simple as signing up with a Peppol infrastructure provider.

Using Value-Added Networks to exchange information with trading partners around the world comes with some distinct benefits.

EDI allows for the transacting of structured data automatically into your accounting system. Not only do you have standardized data, but you cut down on manual errors from human data entry.

No need to establish, grow and maintain an increasing number of connections. The VAN operator will handle the network for you.

In the context of email fraud, connecting with a VAN network means your messages will be encrypted, meaning greater security through a custom channel.

VANs are constantly looking to deliver more for their customers in order to stay competitive, which is why they offer things such as management reporting tools, analytics, and greater visibility

Getting a VAN setup and maintaining a customized connection is obviously going to be more expensive than using a service where the infrastructure is already in place. A cost-benefit analysis must be done to see if setting up a VAN connection is financially viable. Look at setting up your own AP vs working with a infrastructor provider in more dept here

There are more and more solutions that offer easy and cost-effective ways to send data and messages around the world. The VAN operating model looks antiquated unless improvements are continually made. This is precisely why VAN operators are implementing Peppol.

Peppol is the next generation of secure e-document transfer. It contains many of the same benefits of transacting with a value-added network, such as security and automated data entry into your accounting system, but without the need to continually add connections as you enter into new agreements with partners. This is because Peppol is a connect once, reach all network. 

All Access Points, which are run by Peppol service providers, are connected. This means that no matter the Access Point your business is using, you can connect with any other partner in the world and trade eInvoices, e-orders, e-shipping notes, and more, based on Peppol’s Business Interoperability Standards (BIS).

Due to the functionality, security, and flexibility that Peppol provides, it has become the network of choice for eInvoicing throughout the European Union, replacing national document standards that were not interoperable, as well as part of the eInvoicing initiatives in Australia, New Zealand and Singapore.

The Tickstar access point offers a fast, simple way to connect to the Peppol network. Once connected, users can seamlessly exchange business documents with companies and government agencies all around the world. Tickstar is the largest cloud Peppol AP provider in the world, and now hosts approximately 20% of live AP on the Peppol network. The Tickstar AP enables a business to utilise the Tickstar infrastructure to provide Peppol send/receive capabilities to its users.

Get in touch to ask our knowledgeable specialists any questions, get a detailed pricing breakdown, or request a demo!