Real-time economy (RTE) is a digital ecosystem where transactions between diverse economic actors take place in or near real time. This means replacing paper-based business transactions and administrative procedures by automatic exchange of digital, structured and machine-readable data in standardized formats.
The main goal of the implementation of RTE is to carry out a structural change in the business environment and relations with the state, so that business administration and management activities could occur automatically in the background and significantly reduce the administrative burden on entrepreneurs and thereby indirectly increase productivity.
The goal of the RTE vision is to create technical and regulatory facilities by 2027 to increase the quality and availability of business data and enable their digital and automatic exchange in communication between different parties through semantic analysis, structuring and standardization of data and the use of appropriate data exchange channels.
The assessment of the economic impact of real-time economy shows that real-time data exchange solutions (e-invoices, e-receipts, data-driven reporting to the state, e-waybills, etc.) save the business sector more than € 200 million a year. It is possible to save about 14.10 million working hours a year, which equals to the full-time work of 7,000 people.
Benefits for entrepreneurs:
- Companies that exchange and process real-time order, invoice, and receipt data have an operational overview of their business, enabling them to use resources more efficiently and improve planning and risk management processes.
- Real-time machine-readable data exchange between supply chain actors and automated payments accelerate cash flow, enabling companies to operate more efficiently and increase turnover and profits.
- The shift to fully digital transactions between business partners is believed to increase trust and transparency, which can reduce credit institutions’ financing risks and may improve companies’ access to credit and supply chain finance.
- Automated processing of e-invoices can save 60-80% on costs compared to processing of paper invoices and released resources can be used to invest in the development of new products and services.
- In addition to minimizing of costs, e-invoicing creates new market niches for supply chain finance (SCF), primarily by earning from receivables and liabilities. The global market for SCF solutions is estimated at $ 1.3 trillion for receivables management, $100 billion for dynamic discount solutions and $340 billion for secured lending.
Benefits for the state:
- The same corporate data can also be used by state agencies to facilitate automated business reporting, real-time taxation or to compile national statistics without imposing reporting burden on companies.
- Real-time information can be used for better policy-making and optimization of public sector work.
- New tools and technologies for data analytics and machine-learning enable countries make use of real-time data from diverse sources, such as national or third party databases or IoT (‘internet of things’) sensors, which would allow governments to build solutions for continuously monitoring and assessing the country’s economic situation and develop models for forecasting economic events (e.g. company failures, changes in tax revenues) based on real-time data.
- This would allow governments to provide feedback to companies (e.g. enabling companies to assess their indicators against their peers operating in the same sector or giving indications of possible risks) and to develop early warning systems for individual companies and the government.
- Reuse of data in both the public and private sector supports the once-only principle (OOP).
- The implementation of RTE solutions will contribute to establishing the European Union's Digital Single Market and free flow of data.
Benefits for a citizen:
- Quality services at a better price.
- Personalized real-time products and services.
- Tracking the location and origin of products.
- Effective use of taxpayers' money.
- Real-time public services.
Challenges of real-time economy
In general, for the introduction of RTE, the following three issues need to be solved:
- timeliness - today, the data is received with a long delay, which leads to the situation where the information may be out of date at the time of decision making.
- unambiguous data - the data is not based on the same semantic model, i.e .there is no unified approach to data standardization.
- enabling data exchange - data cannot be exchanged in machine-readable form or shared as open data.
In order to avoid further fragmentation of digital society and progressively increasing administrative burden, it is necessary to define the basics and rules for the future exchange of business data - the basis, standards and structure of exchange - to facilitate the digital transition and the function of RTE.
These provide guidance for the development of state agencies’ information systems and amendments of legislation to ensure quicker transition to RTE.
The role of the public sector must be limited to regulation and the provision of necessary digital infrastructure, including accelerating the introduction of innovative RTE solutions through pilot projects.