Crossgate to Offer e-Invoicing services in collaboration with SAP AG

Innovative electronic invoicing services simplify and speed delivery of outbound invoices to customers

Atlanta, Georgia on 21 April 2008

Crossgate AG, the global expert for business-to-business (B2B) integration and electronic data interchange (EDI) services, will extend the scope of its collaboration with SAP AG in the field of business process outsourcing (BPO). The goal is to make life easier for organizations that want to streamline their financial supply chain, thereby saving money and helping the environment.

In today’s fast-paced global economy, companies are finding it increasingly difficult to turn sales into cash promptly and efficiently. Manually sending paper invoices is slow and expensive, and processes are not integrated among business partners: Audits and other regulatory compliance efforts are often time-consuming and difficult. When disputes arise, resolving them puts heavy burdens on company resources and delays payment. These problems may result in inefficient financial supply chains with large amounts of aging and uncollected receivables. Because predicting cash flow is difficult, the average days sales outstanding (DSO) for most companies is 45 days. And long cash conversion cycles can translate into significant competitive disadvantages.

E-Invoicing can reduce accounts receivable costs by up to 60 percent. By improving cash management processes and reducing DSO, companies have more cash available to repurchase stock, expand business operations, and reduce debt, all of which have a positive effect on stock price.

Crossgate, leveraging SAP technology and extending its BPO collaboration with SAP, can now deliver an electronic invoicing service that solves these problems. By replacing paper invoices with electronic data exchange, companies will be able to realize huge savings in time, paper, printing costs, and staffing expenses. Disputes will be easier and faster to resolve electronically because inbound and outbound processes are integrated between business partners. Ensuring regulatory compliance will also also be simplified using digital signatures and electronic archiving. In European Union countries, for example, electronic data exchange makes it easier for companies to protect against audits and VAT tax inquiries by simplifying 10-year storage and search requirements.

“Today, Fortune 1,000 organizations are looking to partner with vendors like Crossgate to accelerate the benefits of electronic invoicing,” said Stefan Tittel, founder and CEO, Crossgate AG. “Over the last three years, many finance organizations have recognized that an outsourced solution such as our Business-Ready Network simplifies the management of the legal requirements while lowering the overall cost of implementation and ongoing management. Through our collaboration with SAP related to BPO, we are helping to solve a key issue for customers transacting business in Europe.”

Crossgate’s e-invoicing solution leverages a specially configured but standard SAP® platform that provides seamless integration with the business processes of buyers and suppliers. The benefits of e-invoicing go beyond financial benefits by contributing to ongoing green supply chain initiatives to save paper and therefore help the environment.

“Our objective is to deliver added value to finance and supply chain organizations worldwide by leveraging the capabilities of select service providers,” said Gianni Giacomelli, head of Strategy and Marketing, SAP Business Process Outsourcing (BPO). “Crossgate, is able to extend our solutions with a simple but powerful service based on best-in-class SAP technology Powered by SAP NetWeaver® in conjunction with business process best practices.”

Crossgate, Inc

Crossgate offers the world’s first Business-Ready Network, guaranteeing 100% integration of business partners, clients and suppliers. A single connection to the Network means electronic data exchange with any business partner regardless of their technical capability. In addition, Crossgate’s B2B-360° Services powered by SAP provide clients direct access to all integrated business partners in the B2B transaction network via their SAP systems. With its legally compliant eInvoicing Services, Crossgate also provides an innovative and 100% secure solution to cover the entire process of incoming and outgoing invoices, including signatures, EU compliance monitoring, and revision-secure automated long-term archiving. More than 40,000 business partners, representing over 10 industries, currently exchange documents and data via the Business-Ready Network.

Crossgate was founded in 2001 in Starnberg, Germany. The principal investors are the family of the SAP founder Dietmar Hopp, the Otto Wolff Industrieberatung und Beteiligungen GmbH and the Al-Jomaih Group. In addition to the headquarters in Starnberg, Crossgate is represented at four sites in Germany, with subsidiary branches in Atlanta, London, Milan and Paris.. Stefan Tittel is the founder and CEO. For more information, visit www.crossgategroup.com