Thursday 9th August, 2012

Tradeshift connects the supply chain to maximise profits

It’s all about connectivity. Without it, you’re running an outdated, soon to be obsolete model – or at least so thinks Christian Lanng, CEO of the e-invoicing and B2B network Tradeshift. His vision of a business with a deep weave into the connectivity of others has catapulted the company into a force to be reckoned with in the space of just over two short years.

The phenomenal success is in no small part due to the fact that Christian sees the company first and foremost as a software company, with a software mind-set at its heart. He describes them as innovators, always striving to deliver the latest thing – but more than that – of the 70 people now employed by Tradeshift, he ensures none lose their enthusiasm by regularly rotating teams and responsibilities to give them the freedom to explore different challenges. Ultimately, Christian says, any company – particularly a software one – lives or dies by the power of its solution, and obviously that means supporting the people who develop them.

This year alone, There have been 127 updates to Tradeshift, winding their way into 120,000 companies – and 50 different apps. “The thing is,” says Christian, “business is a social thing. A lot of today’s businesses act like a lot of separate islands – there’s too much water between them to really call them a network. Tradeshift is a social business, like Facebook or Amazon where the chain of customers and suppliers are connected with a powerful share of the data and visibility.”

Tradeshift has the capacity to continuously build networks. As businesses use the platform, performing interactions like sharing e-invoices, so the third party within the relationship gets added to the network. But more than simply being an exchange of headline data, the platform offers a number of opportunities across the whole network from logistics to supply chain management.

The beauty of the solution from the supplier point of view, and one of its key selling points, is that it’s entirely free on the supplier side - for buyers, there’s a flat rate subscription fee.  Major enterprise software vendors of the past have often fallen foul of empty or broken promises in terms of what the solution can provide, and at what cost. However, the open culture of today’s business means that those organisations with the same sharing ethos are more likely to get the buy-in they need to grow.

So what’s next for Tradeshift? In a hint of what’s to come, Christian said that “cloud solutions open up an exciting number of new opportunities, not least in the financial services industry. SMEs are the backbone of industry in most countries, and yet trading with a major bank continues to be expensive for them. That’s simply not right, and when something’s not right – opportunities open up – watch this space!”