Secretary General Marcus Laube presented status and continued plans to expand globally while keeping local focus. Already established local chapters in Germany, Italy, the Nordics and the Middle-East reported on their numerous activities. New chapters are in the works in the Asia-Pacific region with Singapore, Malaysia and Australia/New Zealand being very active, and elsewhere.
Enhanced B2B interoperability between service providers
The Enhanced B2B Peppol/GENA Incubation project represents a strategic joint initiative, reinforced in close alignment with the OpenPeppol association following up on the presentation at the GENA AGM in Utrecht before the summer. The ongoing launch is managed by OpenPeppol contributing its operational expertise and resources. GENA drives and promotes the benefits and awareness among the many relevant stakeholders in the Service Provider community and public administrations on EU and national levels. GENA and OpenPeppol are planning to formalize their relationship in a cooperation agreement to be entered into soon.
Organizational evolution and a vibrant membership community
To support the many objectives of GENA, organizational changes are implemented, including appointing Patrick Schuller as new COO, transitioning to administrative services provided by Athenora, planning a “GENA Academy” program including cooperation with OpenPeppol and many more.
The GENA Working Groups are as well aligning their focus accordingly, most notably in the “Interoperability Working Group” (IWG). The new focus will be to actively monitor standards development, inform about relevant country-specific developments as well as serving as an interactive forum to discuss use cases in the context of member’s business models.
All in all, the GENA community is a vibrant body of active participants across the entire B2B Service Provider industry set to grow along the many developments in the e-Invoicing space world-wide.
