Contracting authorities, economic operators and/or ICT solution or service providers can participate in PEPPOL by setting up a pilot project.

1. Establish interoperability across communities:

The pilot enables the establishment of interoperability between different existing eProcurement communities (or pilot participants);

2. Use of PEPPOL technology provided via the PEPPOL components:

The pilot uses PEPPOL components – these being the technological building blocks.

In the pre-award phase, at least one of the following components MUST be used: Virtual Company Dossier, eCatalogue, or eSignature validation.

In the post-award phase, use of the PEPPOL transport infrastructure is mandatory in combination with at least one of the following components: eCatalogue, eOrdering or eInvoicing to enable cross-community interoperability.

A PEPPOL pilot has the following objective:

A PEPPOL pilot solves cross-border, organisational or technical issues by connecting eProcurement communities and using PEPPOL standards or PEPPOL tools (e.g. open source software and related components).

PEPPOL also enables electronic document exchange on a national level where there can be a lack of established principles for data exchange in the procurement domain. By supporting the PEPPOL standards, different communities within the same country can connect seamlessly.