The 2018 budget law has provided for Public Administration entities, starting from February 2020, the exclusive use of electronic management of purchase orders for goods and services (public procurement), through the Nodo Smistamento Ordini (NSO).
At the national level, the goal is to achieve a complete digitalization of public procurement, however, also at European level, work is being done in this sense, to allow companies to easily participate in purchasing processes in the European public sector, thus favoring a greater competitiveness among economic operators.
Interzen, with a view to the continuous development of the ZenShare Suite, has added new and fundamental assets in the field of order management:
-accreditation on the Nodo Smistamento Ordini (NSO) or the management of electronic orders of the Italian PA (Interzen was already an intermediary at the SDI for sending electronic invoices);
-certification as Service Provider Access Point PEPPOL for the management of electronic orders at European level
-the new ZenOrders solution, focused on the Order Management process and integrated into ZenCRM, (solution of the Suite for Customer Relationship Management).
ZenOrders was added to the management of the entire Lead-To-Cash process on which ZenCRM is based and which goes from lead generation to invoice collection and, with it, the possibility of managing the entire order phase in an integrated manner (purchase and sale) in electronic format, in accordance with the new legislation on public procurement.
What is the NSO and what is it for?
The NSO (Nodo Smistamento Ordini ), is the digital document transmission system managed by the Department of State Accounting of the Ministry of Economy and Finance, and has become indispensable for all companies that operate as suppliers in the Public Health sector.
Basically, the tasks of the NSO for electronic orders are similar to those that the SDI (Interchange System) performs for electronic invoices: a sort of ‘virtual postman’ for sorting and delivering the order document to the correct recipient, after the appropriate checks.
In the case of electronic management of purchase orders, an important difference compared to what is expected for electronic invoicing is represented by the use of Peppol.
What is Peppol?
Peppol stands for Pan-European Public Procurement On-Line. This is a European project funded by the European Commission, which aims to standardize order management processes, or rather the way in which information regarding purchase orders is structured and exchanged.
Since November 2021, the State Accounting Office has formalized the mandatory nature of Peppol’s technical specifications, specifications that have been implemented by AgID (the Agency for Digital Italy), as PEPPOL Authority in our Country.
In fact, to take advantage of Peppol, the companies supplying the Public Administration must use Access Points accredited by AgID, or obtain the qualification of Service Provider and therefore, essentially, the status of intermediary to transmit and receive order documents via NSO (Nodo Smistamento Ordini).
Interzen, after the SDI ( Sistema di Interscambio) for electronic invoices, is also accredited at the NSO(Nodo Smistamento Ordini) of the PA and has obtained the qualification of Access Point provider (AP) and Service Metadata Publisher (SMP), becoming a full Service Provider Access Point Peppol, at a European level, for receiving and sending orders in electronic format.
More specifically, Interzen Consulting is included in the PEPPOL official lists as:
– PEPPOL Access Point Provider recognized by the Italian PEPPOL Authority
– Certified PEPPOL Access Point
The scenario that is taking shape is a digital revolution of the business management models of companies, which in the short term will lead to a radical change in the relations and operational processes between private companies and public institutions, and in the medium term also in all the others. commercial relationships (B2B and B2C).
