Meet David Jacobs, Partner at TheValueChain. He takes us through the partnership with Descartes.

I am responsible for our SaaS products, connectors, automation templates, and our innovation offering, including the technical offering, integration, and automation.

TheValueChain has more than 400 consultants and is active in Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Luxembourg, and Switzerland. We are part of the Gumption group, which comprises 16 companies and more than 850 colleagues.

TheValueChain focuses on optimizing business processes using SAP technology. This ranges from ERP to HR, customer experience, and more. We are also strongly committed to the latest technologies and innovations.

We started with a focus on EDI and now - with the Peppol for B2B e-invoicing story -  it has turned out Descartes has been a certified access point since 2019. We compared other products and decided to work with Descartes because of their global platform, expertise in electronic communication, flexibility, and reliability.

Our solution is the Peppol Connector™, which connects different SAP systems to the Descartes solution. The connector offers easy configuration and connection, which is often lacking with other providers.
The Descartes solution is very flexible and can connect to different protocols and non-SAP systems, which offers more flexibility for our customers. It can be integrated in a matter of days. It is mainly the support, training, etc. that require our attention.

Any type of message can be received. We set up a “channel” to the Descartes Global Logistics Network™, which handles the mapping and routing to Peppol or other types of electronic traffic.

Typical questions include deadlines (“will there be a delay?”), eco-tax, impact on invoicing processes (“what if my trading partner cannot receive e-invoices (yet)?”), and the urgency of implementing Peppol. Many customers in Belgium are now aware of the urgency and are starting to take action. This means that the number of simultaneous projects is increasing. We have a number of project managers who focus on e-invoicing projects. If they are unable to keep up with the increase in projects, we have the option of deploying additional resources. This is possible because we have built a project template together with Descartes that is easy to implement.

The biggest concern is the January 1, 2026 deadline for Belgium. We notice that not every company is already proactively preparing for e-invoicing via Peppol. Some companies may not be ready in time, and it’s unclear what the government will do in terms of fines or postponements. This creates uncertainty among customers.

The partnership offers opportunities to scale, especially for EDI. Peppol is an entry point, after which we can expand to other Descartes solutions to further unburden the customer. Descartes offers many additional solutions that are interesting and helpful for our mutual customers to streamline their processes.