E-Transformation: No paper, no problem

In the past, almost all information used to be on paper. Now a lot is digital. The result: lower paper consumption. Or at least you would think so. But the reality is different. Whereas in 1970, around 130 million tons of paper was produced worldwide, in 2005 it was 367 million tons and in 2019 as much as 415 million tons. So paper consumption is actually increasing with negative effects on the environment because its production requires large quantities of wood, water, energy, and chemicals such as chlorine, acids, and solvents. Paper is often still used for administrative processes, because that is the way it has always been and legal regulations encourage it.

Gürcan Yeğit, Enterprise Products Director at NTT DATA Business Solutions Türkiye want to change this. One important part of his business area is digital transformation at companies. Yeğit has identi­fied three areas that are often still organized in paper form at companies: invoices, waybills, and accounting. So Yeğit and his team have developed three new products: E-Invoice, E-Waybill, and E-Ledger.

E-Transformation

• Even today, paper is often still used for waybills, invoices, and accounting. Especially at smaller companies.
• The NTT DATA Business Solutions products E-Invoice, E-Waybill, and E-Ledger make complete digitalization possible.
• As a result, processes at companies not only get faster, cheaper, and more secure – but also more environmentally friendly.
• In Türkiye, 25 customers have switched to the NTT DATA Business Solutions e-products, saving a total of 3,960 tons of wood, 89 million tons of water, and 8,910 cubic meters of carbon dioxide emissions each year.

E-Invoice allows companies to send and receive digital copies of invoices instead of paper invoices. Incoming and outgoing materials can be processed with digital E-Waybill copies, thus dispensing with the traditional method of preparing paper waybills. And thanks to E-Ledger, which generates XML documents, the accounting documents produced with ERP systems no longer have to be printed out on paper and sent to the tax authorities by mail.

But which companies are still carrying out a lot of administrative processes on paper in the year 2023? “More than most people think,” says Yeğit. “In Türkiye, for example, digitalized accounting is required only from a certain revenue level.” Many smaller companies therefore still use paper for accounting and communication with the tax authorities. But the benefits of going paperless are plain to see. And of course, when companies go paperless it also saves resources. Yeğit has calculated the quantities saved.

As a result of 25 customers in Türkiye having switched to the NTT DATA Business Solutions e-products, 3,960 tons of wood, 89 million tons of water, 8,910 cubic meters of carbon dioxide emissions, and 28 billion BTU of energy are saved each year (BTU stands for “British thermal unit,” with one unit representing the amount of thermal energy required to heat one pound of water by one degree Fahrenheit). And this is just the savings in one year. Once a switch is permanent, these savings are multiplied each subsequent year. In addition, the number of customers is growing. Yeğit’s team aims to have 100 customers in three years’ time, and 150 customers in five years. This will further increase the resource savings.

“70 to 80 percent of the software is the same for every customer, the rest is individually adapted,” says Yeğit, who established the division for the three e -products two years ago. It usually takes just a month for the customer to get an adapted version of E-Invoice, E-Waybill, and E-Ledger. Only for big customers it might take longer. “But it is no more than five months in these cases, too,” says Yeğit.

This success in Türkiye is prompting NTT DATA Business Solutions to look further. From 2025 onward, all companies in the European Union must have switched their administrative processes to a digital system. Yeğit: “We are now in the process of transitioning our products to this major mar­ket.” A transition that is achievable. “We already have international customers that operate factories in Türkiye and use our products,” says Yeğit. But of course, adjustments to the national legislation, especially tax laws, are required in each case.

Partly due to its potential, the project has gained a lot of recognition within NTT DATA Business Solutions and recently won the NTT DATA Global Sustainability Award. Gürcan Yeğit attended the parent company’s award ceremony in Tokyo, Japan. “It was great to see so many colleagues from all around the world and their successful projects,” says Yeğit enthusiastically. And it may well be that Yeğit’s digitalization products gain even more attention in the future.

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