The Remmers Company relies on Softway AG’s Global E-Invoice Cloud

The Remmers Group successfully uses Softway AG’s Global E-Invoice Cloud not only to reliably meet legal requirements for e-invoicing, but also to derive strategic value from it: standardized processes, international scalability, greater transparency, and self-service for business units.

Following initial fragmented, piecemeal solutions, the Remmers Company is now relying on a centralized, scalable solution for international e-invoicing—initially for Belgium and Poland, among others, with additional countries to be added as the rollout progresses.

Initial situation

E-invoicing was not an entirely new concept for the Remmers Group. As an internationally active company, Remmers was already using country-specific, standalone solutions—for example, in Hungary. However, these solutions were fragmented and posed challenges in day-to-day operations: Monitoring, data processing, troubleshooting, and the division of responsibilities among IT, business units, local subsidiaries, and external partners were not consistently and clearly defined.

As regulatory requirements in Europe became increasingly stringent, it became clear that e-invoicing should no longer be handled through isolated, standalone solutions. Remmers wanted to create a scalable approach that could eventually be used by all its subsidiaries—while also offering the opportunity to standardize processes and empower business units more effectively.

What challenges arose before and during the implementation?

The main challenge was to transform the complexity of international e-invoicing requirements into a unified, manageable process landscape.

The focus was particularly on:

• Replacing fragmented, country-specific solutions
• Different legal and technical requirements of the national subsidiaries
• Transparency throughout the entire billing process
• Troubleshooting and tracking Invoices that were not successfully transmitted
• Standardization of processes across national borders
• Reducing IT dependency in day-to-day operations
• Illustration of country-specific formats, transmission methods and requirements

The concept of self-service was particularly important to Remmers: departments should remain in charge and be able to identify, investigate and resolve issues independently – without every enquiry automatically being forwarded to IT.

What was the approach taken in the project?

Before proceeding with the technical implementation, Remmers first analyzed the existing processes at the regional subsidiaries. This involved reviewing both outgoing and incoming invoices, identifying data format inconsistencies, and documenting local requirements.

On this basis, a target process was defined that was intended to function as uniformly as possible across all countries. The goal was not to create another isolated solution, but rather an internationally scalable standard process.

When selecting a service provider, Remmers was particularly convinced by:

• Softway AG’s technical expertise
• understanding of processes in the SAP and output management environment
• the hands-on approach to collaboration
• the Managed-SaaS-Architecture of the Global E-Invoice Cloud
• the clear division of responsibilities
• the ability to flexibly accommodate international requirements
• already positive experience with Softway in the area of forms

Technically, the integration is handled via SAP BTP. Invoices are generated in the ERP system as usual and transferred to the Global E-Invoice Cloud as IDoc using a dedicated message type. There, the data is mapped, validated, and forwarded to the respective network. The data is then returned to the source system and archived with the document.

A key advantage: The solution was up and running quickly. For the first country, Remmers was already in the testing phase after a short technical integration period, and the Global E-Invoice Cloud went live after just 3 months. Additional countries could then be implemented much more quickly, since the basic integration was already in place.

What outcome was achieved? What were the results?

With the Global E-Invoice Cloud, Remmers was able to transform its e-invoicing process from a regulatory requirement into a strategic component of its digital transformation.

the most important results:

• A centralized solution instead of country-specific individual solutions
• Productive deployment for Belgium and Poland
• Gradual rollout to additional countries
• Transparent status tracking via monitoring
• Improved error analysis thanks to a complete movement history and attachments
• Self-Service Capability for Business Units and Service Centers
• Reduced IT workload in day-to-day operations
• Standardization of processes across national subsidiaries
• A scalable foundation for future international requirements

For Remmers, the combination of standardization and flexibility is particularly valuable: Processes run consistently, while country-specific requirements can be accurately mapped through customization and mapping. The business units manage themselves independently and only need to draw on the expertise of Softway’s developers when more complex problems arise.

outlook

For Remmers, e-invoicing is not a one-time project but an ongoing expansion. Additional countries, such as France, Hungary, and Italy, are in the planning stages. In Hungary, the plan is also to replace an existing legacy system. In addition, Remmers is working to integrate additional attachments into the process and, in the future, to archive them properly as well.