Regulations around e-invoice and compliance services drives global customer base growth at 83 percent, with 17 percent coming from MEAA operations
Pagero Middle East, building one of the world’s largest open business networks, now oversees operations across Middle East, Africa, India and ASEAN countries (MEAA) from its regional hub in Dubai. With local offices in Singapore, Colombo, Mumbai and Dubai, Pagero not only delivers global projects but leverages local knowledge of compliance and business practices to make these relevant across the region.
The Pagero customer base grew 83 percent in the last full year, of which 17 percent of new connections this year coming from the MEAA region. Luis Ortega, who took over the MEA operations as Managing Director a year ago, is now overseeing the expanded presence in MEAA.
Ortega said, “With regulations and wider adoption of digital technology driven by these regulations, we are seeing a strong demand for our global platform around international trade hubs like Dubai, Singapore, Mumbai and Colombo. We have widened our partnerships with ERP vendors like IFS, Unit4, SAP Ariba, Microsoft, and Jeeves and that means that e-invoicing, and managing the supply chain for medium to large enterprises is now not only easily deployable but compatible with the regulations in place everywhere.”
Over the past year, several governments across the MEAA region have announced or adopted new regulations regarding e-invoice and real-time reporting of Indirect Taxes, such as e-invoice mandates in India, Egypt, and Vietnam as well as a new law being drafted in KSA. Pagero leverages its global processes around adoption of standard communication and format for e-invoice and other electronic documents such as Peppol in Singapore, Australia or New Zealand to help with implementation in new countries and regulations.
Whilst Pagero operates across all verticals, it saw significant growth from the healthcare sector during the Covid-19 pandemic, serving both healthcare suppliers and hospitals to facilitate their digital ordering and invoicing process. There has also been strong growth in the adoption of IT service providers together with social network platforms with B2B requirements. Finally, from the perspective of the Purchase-to-Pay process across both the retail and manufacturing sectors, and multinational businesses with global operations, the demand for compliance services is now becoming a priority, driven by regional and local e-invoice requirements by governments.
Ortega added, “We are seeing a demand for Accounts Payables digital automation services, as businesses see they can improve their efficiency by receiving and handling those documents electronically. It is not just the accounts but the system now shows them the possibility of not just handling digital invoicing but also handle other documentation like Purchase Orders (PO), PO confirmations, and Goods Receipt Note’s (GRN).”
According to Ortega, “Touchless and paperless processes are the new norm after the pandemic, building both scalability and resilience to the business when manual handling is limited by lockdowns. More governments are pushing hard to digitalise the process so they can automate and control indirect tax collection. This is an opportunity for businesses to gain efficiencies in their Order-to-Cash (O2C) and Purchase-to-Pay (P2P) processes by adopting full digital flows.”
Pagero’s vision is to connect everyone in business through Open Smart Business Networks so that it can facilitate the way they buy or sell while staying compliant with local rules and regulations and business needs.
