What changes this year in your conversation with your software supplier?
If you talk to your software supplier about the battery passport this year, you are talking about something different than a year ago. Then the conversation was mainly about whether the regulation applies to you. This year the conversation shifts to how your systems must record, transmit and keep data available for ten years. For many companies, this shift is the moment when the subject changes from 'something for next year' to 'something for the next IT planning'.
The reason is that the technical implementation of the regulation becomes more concrete this year. The main lines are already set: there will be a digital passport, with a QR code as the data carrier, which must remain accessible throughout the life of the battery. What is still being worked out is the precise format in which data is recorded and exchanged, and how that fits in with systems that companies already use. For your software supplier, that is the difference between 'we will build something later' and 'we already know where it needs to go'.
Why your current software is not automatically ready
An accounting package, webshop system or ERP is built to track orders, inventory and invoices. The battery passport asks for something different: data that stays with a specific battery, even after that battery is resold, built into a bicycle or returned for recycling years later. This is not a matter of adding an extra field to an existing system, but of a separate way of recording and storing data.
That is why it makes sense not to wait this year until everything is finalised, but to ask how your supplier thinks about this. Is there a roadmap for battery data? Is there thought being given to a link with a separate passport system, or does it all have to fit into the existing package? And who is responsible if the data still needs to be accessible ten years from now, even if you then have a different supplier? This last point is often underestimated: software changes faster than a battery lasts.
What concretely changes for whom
For companies that manufacture or import batteries themselves, this year mainly changes the urgency: the specifications that suppliers build their systems on become more precise, and that is the time to check whether an ongoing software project still fits. For companies that resell batteries or process them in a finished product, such as a machinery manufacturer or a bicycle importer, something more subtle changes: it becomes clearer which part of the data chain lies with the manufacturer and which part falls to you. This in turn determines what you can expect from your own software.
For office and HR organisations in which batteries are not a core product, but do appear in business equipment such as electric business bicycles, there is less change this year. There it is mainly a matter of knowing where the responsibility lies, and that question is more appropriately addressed to the supplier of the equipment than to your own software environment. Anyone who is unsure whether this is relevant to their own situation can safely have it investigated via a brief scan that maps your situation.
The conversation itself: from question to agreement
It is tempting to postpone the conversation with your software supplier until everything is finalised. But this year is precisely the time to pin down a few things that do not depend on the precise technical specification: who keeps the data for ten years, what happens when you switch to a different package, and whether the supplier themselves follows what changes or whether you are expected to. These are agreements that you can already make now, even if the final details of the regulation have not yet been filled in.
What exactly that conversation should cover depends on how your company is positioned in the chain and what data you already have in-house. You will find an overview of the concepts and obligations that play a role there in the knowledge base with topics per situation. For those who want to know how such a passport is compiled and hosted in practice, this is explained on the page that shows where the information comes from.
What is not stated here is a ruling on your specific contract or software environment: you assess that together with your supplier or, if in doubt about the legal side, with a lawyer. What is certain is that the conversation becomes more concrete this year than it was last year.
Would you first like to clarify for yourself whether and how this affects your company before you have the conversation with your software supplier? Take the free quick-scan or read the other topics in the frequently asked questions about the battery passport.