Basware awarded a Green Apple Award for Environmental Best Practice

Basware is commended for helping businesses to improve their environmental best practice with its Global e-invoicing Open Network

Basware, the leading provider of purchase to pay solutions, today announced that it has been awarded an internationally recognised Green Apple Award for its Global e-invoicing Open Network. The UK-based award, which attracted more than 500 nominations, will be presented at a ceremony at the House of Commons in London later this year.

In 2009, 30 billion invoices were sent across Europe alone. A typical invoice is approximately three pages long meaning that 90 billion pieces of paper were printed out, posted and flown across Europe in just one year. If all of those invoices were sent electronically 12.6 million trees, 105 billion pieces of A4 paper, 13 billion litres of water and 5.4 billion kWh of power could be saved each year on just the paper manufacturing alone. The equivalent of which could power 15.8 million 40W lamps, constantly, for 24 hours of the day for an entire year.1

The Basware Global e-invoicing Open Network promotes connectivity between buyers and suppliers helping companies to switch to e-invoicing, so they can by-pass the vast amounts of paper invoicing that they produce each year to help them achieve Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) or Green targets. The Open Network, which connects buyers and suppliers by forming interoperability agreements with local and global e-invoicing partners, reduces the need to print, post, process, manually key-in, store and dispose of paper invoices.

In 2009 the network supported millions of global transactions. The Basware Open Network has a global reach of 80 partners across the globe. In 2009 the Network made new partner agreements in Australia so that it now operates across all continents as a truly global network.

Using Basware e-invoicing solutions, one of the UK’s leading pharmaceutical chains, Lloydspharmacy, is processing a large part of the 1.2 million invoices it processes annually, electronically. Lloydspharmacy is in the process of moving to a completely electronic invoicing system which will eventually save over 419 trees and 3.5 million pieces of A4 paper each year.

The Green Apple Award is run by the Green Organisation, an independent non-profit, nonpolitical group supported by the Environment Agency and the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health in the UK. The organisation is dedicated to recognising, rewarding and promoting environmental best practice around the world. The awards are presented to companies that realise the business advantages of being green as well as those that have reaped the benefits that can be had from environmental best practice.

“With the rise of the green agenda over the last five or so years, businesses across the globe are making it their responsibility to reduce their carbon footprint so it’s fantastic to see that the environmental benefits of e-Invoicing are being recognised as part of this, said Andrew Jesse, Country Manager at Basware UK. “To receive such a prestigious award is a reflection of our hard work and high level of commitment to delivering solutions that not only helps businesses to improve their productivity but their environmental best practice as well.”

1 Figures according to Basware research 2009

About Basware
Basware is the global leader in purchase-to-pay solutions with more than 1,500 customers and 1,000,000 users in over 50 countries around the world. With Basware, organisations can reduce the cost of buying and paying for goods and services and gain visibility and control of their entire spending process by automating manual processes, from sourcing, contract management, purchasing and supplier collaboration to invoice automation. Basware solutions and services enable substantial cost reductions across businesses and deliver value by providing compliance and control, as well as fast return on investment. The solutions are distributed and implemented, either on site or as a service, in Europe, the US, and Asia-Pacific through an extensive network of Basware offices and business partners. www.basware.com