Florian Beckmann and Célia Beckmann come together here not only as hosts, but also as daughter and father from two generations. Together they look back on the origin story of billbox: from the first entrepreneurial ideas, through experiences in consulting, accounting and automation, to today’s platform for digital commercial processes. Célia, who holds a master’s degree in international security, has contributed over the years to various projects and blogs, including a project of her own at billbox.

Florian, who founded his first company almost 25 years ago, shares his vision of simplifying commercial processes and building a network of entrepreneurs. This gave rise to billbox — a platform that digitizes accounts receivable and accounts payable processes and supports companies of every size.

The episode explores the podcast as a new medium, one that offers the opportunity to treat topics in greater depth than classic blogs or other formats. Florian Beckmann talks about his experiences with podcasts and audiobooks — among them “Die dunkle Seite des Mondes” (The Dark Side of the Moon) by Martin Suter — and explains why listening in this format opens up a new perspective.

The conversation turns to the question of why accounting and payment processes are so often needlessly complicated, how digitalization has changed over the past 20–25 years, and why real process thinking matters more than individual tools. We also talk about European data sovereignty, the role of Switzerland and Germany, and what “we’re already digital” really means today. This episode is a personal introduction, a look behind the scenes, and the starting point for further conversations around billbox, digitalization, entrepreneurship and the exchange between generations.

Beyond that, the episode addresses the international dimensions of billbox — in particular its activities in Germany and Switzerland — as well as the importance of the origin and safeguarding of data, from both a legal and a personal standpoint.

Finally, the episode reflects on how digitalization has evolved within companies: whereas the focus used to be primarily on cost reduction, today the emphasis has shifted to end-to-end data models, collaborative workflows and the interoperability of different systems. The message is that processes should first be understood and only then mapped digitally — an approach billbox has followed for years.

This first episode serves as a personal introduction, offers a look behind the scenes, and paves the way for further episodes that will explore in greater depth how billbox helps companies design their processes efficiently and digitally.