On 4/9/13 9:08 AM, Stephen D Green wrote:

:-) I walked into that one!
How, then, would you envision the alternative, e.g. for invoices?

There are two rough answers:

1) Fiat standards.  Accounts payable departments have a long history of rejecting invoices that arrive in formats they don't like. Organizations that are large enough to inflict their standards and requirements on people they owe money to will do just that.  (See, for example, the earlier tax conversation.)

2) Local transformations.  Most invoices come with relationships that also need management, and it is rare that an invoice by itself triggers a payment.  If I had a billion invoices arrive, all different every time, I might be overwhelmed, but that is not usually reality.  I usually have some idea who the requesters are, the data is usually comprehensible, and matching the forms is typically not difficult.  It's not difficult to set up a recurring transformation from a form X likes to the form I like.

And yes, I know bureaucracies can't imagine #2, but as is obvious I have diminishing sympathy for their perception of efficiency.

And now I need to get back to work!

Thanks,
--
Simon St.Laurent
http://simonstl.com/

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