Comarch ECOD, the well-known and increasingly widely-used platform for the transmission of e-invoices between retail chains and producers, is making its Asian debut with the opening of offices in Shanghai in China and Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam.

Following on from the Polish domestic market, Central and Southern Europe, and Russia and Ukraine, this is the fourth strategic territory on which the Polish Comarch ECOD platform will be an e-business operator for local retail chains. ECOD was launched in Poland in 2001 and has taken huge strides forward so that now the orders for almost all the goods available in supermarkets in Poland and fourteen other countries are sent via the EDI Platform at the Comarch Data Center in Krakow. Now it is the turn of the Far East: the product the Chinese consumer picks up from the supermarket shelf will have been ordered electronically using Comarch technology. To make this possible the company has prepared Chinese and Vietnamese versions of the popular platform. It is also employing local specialists both for IT and call center posts and opening a local data center in China.
         
At the beginning the facilities in China and Vietnam will be used by current Comarch ECOD customers, including some of the largest retail chains in Western Europe. It is expected that the first documents will be transmitted in mid 2009. The company than plans to gradually connect further retail chains to the system: in particular the local ones in China and Vietnam.
 
Jacek Mikus, Comarch Consulting Center Director, commented,
 
‘ECOD in Asia is an important event for the product itself. It demonstrates the scale and reach of our skills and abilities and is truly something to make one stop, think and even marvel.  After all, you do not open an office on the other side of the Earth just like that. This is important evidence for companies that Comarch is a serious global business partner for the long haul.’