Start a Business in 2 Minutes

EASE OFDOINGBUSINESS take farlesstimethanboilinganegg.Thiswhitepapershowshowthiscanbedone. With thehelpofstrategicthinkingandtechnology, thetimeto register acompanycan abusinesstookThe days monthsandinvolved whenstarting alotofred tapeare over. 2 minutes abusinessin Start WHITE PAPER

nortal.com “Every responsible government has the mission to build and maintain a thriving business climate in order to maximize wealth for society.”

Rein Lang, Estonian ex. Minister of Justice

The Seamless Society Where government, businesses and individuals meet

How to do this?

First, by approaching the mission from the investor’s perspective. Investor expects the communication with the government institutions to be transparent, secure and fast. And all this is possible today. Nortal

Estonia used to hold the world record for registering a new Nortal helps governments to company in 18 minutes. In 2015, a new record has been set by improve local business climate Oman, where the fastest new company registration was via reforms powered by completed in only 1 minute and 6 seconds. technology. We call them Nordic talent (Nortal) solutions. Both records became possible thanks to Nortal’s expertise in building a seamless e-government. Ease of doing business 03 Setting trends for the world

Starting a business Nortal Vision What affects the ease of starting a business: “Every responsible government has the mission to build Investments flow in and and maintain a thriving business climate in order to 1. Number of procedures economic activity speeds up, 2. Time (days) because company registration is maximize wealth for society.” 3. Cost (% of IPC) easy and can be done online in 4. Paid in minimum capital less than an hour. The paid in minimum capital is suitable for Rein Lang, All these indicators are measured by World Bank startups and company is entitled Estonian ex. Minister of Justice and they affect the rank of the economy in the to act without paid in capital. annual ranking list Doing Business. Change should be used not only to speed up company registration, but to rethink the scope of services to entrepreneurs by e-government. The Seamless Society Where government, businesses and individuals meet

How to do this?

Digital 24/7 Business register 2

Digital Business reporting

Digital 24/7 Public announcements

Integrated Obligations register

Business activity supervision Good luck with your new business! Starting a business

Digital 24/7 Business register 2

Digital Business 1. Digital 24/7 Business Best Practices reporting register STRATEGY Every country has its own laws and rules to manage business Register all legal entities in one register.

registration. Our experts have been involved into creating and Regulate in the law the scope of 3 reviewing commercial laws in multiple countries. Based on our information collected and processed by the Business register. expertise and best practices, we can transform business Legalize digital signing and regulate digital registers to allow doing business easier while reducing signatures. Digital 24/7 Public government costs and minimizing the risks. BUSINESS PROCESSES announcements We believe that business register should also serve the Avoid asking documents on paper as much entrepreneurs and government in other areas than simple as possible. Use digital signatures to sign registration and providing an undertaking a name and number. documents. 4 Appointing and changing company signatories entitled to act Empower notaries or other certified legal professionals to be service providers for on behalf of the company should be made available for Business register to deal with people who entrepreneurs online 24/7 and the list of signatories should be cannot or do not want to use e-services. Integrated open to the public also 24/7. Business reporting and credit Consider discounting state fees for online Obligations register information can also be integrated to the register. services. Provide standardized articles of Business register can be developed to an open „one stop shop“ association for company registration for entrepreneurs where one can communicate with the online. government and obtain information regarding laws and TECHNOLOGY regulations in force and get basic information about their Integrate business register with trademark 5 potential partners. registration system in order to avoid naming conflicts.

Future registers are BUSINESS PORTALS, serving people and Avoid duplicating data. Build Business activity government agencies 24/7. system-to-system integrations. Create electronic audit trail for all changes supervision in Business register. Good luck with your Provide walk-through videos for e-services. Use international classification for commercial activities registration and data new business! processing. 06 Ease of doing business Ease of doing business 07

2. Digital Business Best Practices reporting STRATEGY

One way or another, companies report about their activities Define national level taxonomy and and wellbeing to government. In most cases they report to practices for Business reporting. multiple government agencies and more than often those Use reporting obligation as a tool to keep reports have overlapping parts. Our vision is to consolidate the business register clean and remove companies that are not active. reporting as much as possible and share data among different Make statistics public on a regular basis parties. such as: number of registered companies by legal form and status, number of new At the same time, governments have information about companies by legal form, number of submitted applications, average time of companies that can be very interesting for potential business registration, number of companies under partners and other market participants. Some of this liquidation or liquidated. information should be made available to everyone in order to increase trust towards business climate. For example, it should BUSINESS PROCESSES be public information who are major shareholders of a Enforce Business reporting at least on company or what are the business activities the company is annual basis. Otherwise information might performing. We know what information should be public and get too old. how to convince decision makers to make it public. Consolidate reporting requirements from different government agencies and provide only one channel for company to report.

TECHNOLOGY

Make Business reports public and enable search criteria (e.g. name, registration code, commercial activity, investors, signatories).

Make company basic information available online and free of charge to everybody. 3. Digital Public Make company information available via Best Practices machine readable interface for system-to-system integrations. announcements Present information in a visual format for STRATEGY information such as Business relations. Commercial organizations’ events that have to be made public Legalize electronic Public announcements (renaming, bankruptcy, removing signatory, etc.) are portal as official channel instead of or parallel with paper based channels. traditionally printed in small font in a daily newspaper. This is expensive and rather inefficient nowadays in the digital world. TECHNOLOGY We can provide a modern solution for that. We know that such Publish in electronic format all change is uncomfortable for newspaper owners, therefore we announcements regarding registration in help to manage the transition for them. Business register. Public announcements should be In Estonia, paper based public announcements are history for generated automatically based on changes eight years already. Everything is online, easily reachable and in business accurate.

In Oman, all public announcements from business register are automatically published online. Nortal has prepared a legal change to eliminate a requirement to print public announcement in major newspapers. Ease of doing business 07

3. Digital Public Best Practices announcements STRATEGY

Commercial organizations’ events that have to be made public Legalize electronic Public announcements (renaming, bankruptcy, removing signatory, etc.) are portal as official channel instead of or parallel with paper based channels. traditionally printed in small font in a daily newspaper. This is expensive and rather inefficient nowadays in the digital world. TECHNOLOGY We can provide a modern solution for that. We know that such Publish in electronic format all change is uncomfortable for newspaper owners, therefore we announcements regarding registration in help to manage the transition for them. Business register. Public announcements should be In Estonia, paper based public announcements are history for generated automatically based on changes eight years already. Everything is online, easily reachable and in business accurate.

4. Integrated Obligation Best Practices register STRATEGY

Companies have multiple financial and non-financial Offer creditor a possibility to report about obligations towards government, business partners and debt and delete registration when obligation is fulfilled. employees. As long as these obligations are fulfilled on timely manner, all is good and it does not concern other parties. In Regulate who and how can register obligations and to whom those are made case obligations are not fulfilled, it might be a potential public. problem for other parties. From this perspective, it makes sense to share this information with potential business TECHNOLOGY partners, government entities, employees, etc. We know that Make public Information regarding debts, fines and other obligations of companies this can be very sensitive information and thus proper via special online service. regulation is very important.

Nortal has created a legal and technical framework in Oman, which enables to register all financial and non-financial obligations of a company in one database managed by the business register owner. Ease of doing business 09

5. Business activity Best Practices supervision STRATEGY

Maintaining a healthy business climate also means keeping it Enforce procedures for compulsory clean and organized. This involves eliminating companies who dissolution and cancellation of the company after it fails to submit an annual have decided to ignore rules of fair competition. This is a report two years in a row. difficult task, but understandable regulation, motivated Appoint an entity responsible for risk government officials and modern IT systems can make it easier. analysis and defining risk vectors.

For example, regulations should allow to liquidize the company Put on hold all applications submitted by a if it has failed to submit business report 2 times in a row. company in case the company has unpaid fines or hasn’t fulfilled its obligations towards state. In Estonia, the information gathered by the Business Register has enabled to decrease the cases of fraud significantly. Benefits for the state. Benefits for the business

We are proud to have played a major role in the e-transformation initiatives conducted in Estonia and Oman. Together with our government partners we accomplished remarkable results and we are looking forward to continue the journey towards the seamless Part or Nortal´s team at Commercial Registration service in Invest society. Easy portal official launch event on the 4th of June 2015 in Hotel Intercontinental, Muscat.

Estonia Impact Oman Nortal impact During the last 15 years, Nortal has delivered Number of registered companies YoY up 15 % -> ~40% of the Estonian e-transformation We helped Ministry of Commerce and Industry to reduce the 80% of services moved online, saving 5M hours Company registration can be done from one online portal and annually. it takes 18 minutes to establish fully operational company. time required to register company online from one week to two minutes. In 2015, 90% of the companies were established online. EoDB ranking 12 th UP 4 PLACES 36% of companies were registered online eight months after min User satisfaction of the Company Registration Portal is over 2 launching the service in April 2015. COMPANY 90%, according to surveys. REGISTRATION TIME UN e-Government Calculations showed over 140,000 hours are saved per year by Electronic business reporting has reduced private sector survey 2014 investors using online services which translates in around spending on reporting related activities by 4.5 million euros. th UP 3 PLACES Ministries Involved 13 3 million euros saved per year. IN 1ST ITERATION FROM 25 Nearly 100% of the annual reports are submitted through the 11 Projected savings of government spending with rent and online system. According to an XBRL Annual Reporting personnel costs is 50% starting with 2018. satisfaction survey, over 85% of the respondents were satisfied 80% 99% with new taxonomy based report forms. ONLINE ONLINE Omani government entities are reading company certificate information in real-time from business register. In average it Acceptance of foreign electronic signatures increased the Estonian Bank saves 7 million sheets of paper per month. 36% 72% number of potential users from 2 million up to 20 million since public services transactions ONLINE ONLINE 2008, year from which portal also accepts. We prepared a reform (legal, procedural and technical) to introduce compulsory annual business reporting and company Companies Licenses Portuguese, Belgian and Finnish ID-cards and Lithuanian 67% 95% cancelation in case of non-compliance. It is planned to enter registered covered Mobile-ID are accepted. Citizens of these four countries can ONLINE ONLINE into force from January 1 2017 and will help the government to establish a company in Estonia from the comfort of their home cancel over 100,000 inactive company records from the country through the Portal. e-Census Tax 2011 declarations Business register. We conducted activity licensing review and reduced number of activities requiring license by 45% as of March 2016.

59% of activity licenses can be applied online from March 2016. Commercial registration launch event Part or Nortal´s team at Commercial Registration service in Invest Easy portal official launch event on the 4th of June 2015 in Hotel Intercontinental, Muscat.

Oman Nortal impact Number of registered companies YoY up 15 % -> We helped Ministry of Commerce and Industry to reduce the 80% of services moved online, saving 5M hours annually. time required to register company online from one week to two minutes. 36% of companies were registered online eight months after 2min launching the service in April 2015. COMPANY REGISTRATION TIME Calculations showed over 140,000 hours are saved per year by investors using online services which translates in around Ministries Involved 3 million euros saved per year. 11 IN 1ST ITERATION FROM 25 Projected savings of government spending with rent and personnel costs is 50% starting with 2018.

Omani government entities are reading company certificate information in real-time from business register. In average it saves 7 million sheets of paper per month. 36% 72% ONLINE ONLINE We prepared a reform (legal, procedural and technical) to introduce compulsory annual business reporting and company Companies Licenses cancelation in case of non-compliance. It is planned to enter registered covered into force from January 1 2017 and will help the government to cancel over 100,000 inactive company records from the Business register.

We conducted activity licensing review and reduced number of activities requiring license by 45% as of March 2016.

59% of activity licenses can be applied online from March 2016. Commercial registration launch event Nortal is building a seamless Nortal's approach to society globally Ease of Doing Business

Nortal is a multinational strategic change and When business incorporation is made quick and easy, technology company. Combining the unique economic activity increases and investments flow experience of transforming Estonia into a digital leader more freely. and creating change in businesses with a strategic approach and data-driven technology, our vision is to Today’s entrepreneurs think and move faster, build a seamless society. challenging convention; traditional business registries are far too slow and limited to meet their needs. Nortal works to build a seamless society that Creating a new business, ﬁ ling tax returns and paying stands on three pillars — enterprise, e-health, and bills can all be done in minutes with a phone or laptop e-government. In each of these three areas, Nortal has from the comfort of your own home or in a café. The helped very influential customers achieve strategic speed of doing business is driven by our advances in change and build better experiences. technology. To reap the greatest dividends, business regulations must also advance to keep pace. Operating in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and North America, Nortal doesn’t just provide IT services, but Nortal partners with governments to maximize actual structural reforms, focusing on the underlying entrepreneurial satisfaction through civil efﬁ ciency. Our impact on the target organization, whether it be cost-effective public administration systems create a governments, hospitals or private enterprises. fertile environment for businesses to thrive.

Get in touch with our expert

Peeter Smitt, Managing Director at Nortal, has developed a unique experience by combining different business cultures from the Western and Arab world. He understands the business challenges as well as the opportunities that technology is providing to solve them. Most of his experience is related to deﬁ ning, selling, building and implementing eGovernment and eGovernance programs and projects in multiple countries and regions.

Peeter Smitt Nortal’s Managing Director [email protected]

Learn more about Ease of Doung Business on Nortal's website: https://nortal.com/government/ease-of-doing-business/