James Stirk originally joined Tradeshift almost 3 years ago to head up the sales function, having spent over 25 years building strategy, sales growth and business development for established Multinationals (Fortune 500) and smaller (PE-backed) organisations across finance, ERP, business intelligence and cyber. Now sitting as CEO he shoulders responsibility for scaling the business, strengthening its current proposition and partnering with clients to uncover new ways of delivering value.
We caught up with James to get the detail on a business that wants to ensure 100% digitalisation across every supply chain relationship.
James, what is Tradeshift?
Tradeshift is a leading B2B commerce and fintech platform that empowers finance and procurement leaders to optimise operational processes, reduce costs, mitigate risks, and foster transactional agility across the supply chain. We achieve this through a blend of e-invoicing, marketplace eCommerce, and embedded fintech services, providing businesses with tools to automate transactional processes, discover new suppliers, attract customers, and optimise working capital according to their needs.
Our vision is to connect every company in the world, creating economic opportunity for all. At the core of this vision is the Tradeshift network. Today, Tradeshift is the world’s largest trade network, linking over a million companies globally, enabling seamless, digital transactions between customers and suppliers anywhere in the world.
What issue does your solution solve?
Digitisation within large enterprises is at a fairly advanced stage. The missing piece in the puzzle is digitisation between business partners across the broader supply chain ecosystem. Tradeshift simplifies and automates everyday business interactions such as purchasing, invoicing, and payments by offering a centralised digital platform where businesses can connect, collaborate, and transact efficiently.
The specific solutions we offer today are grouped into three primary areas:
Payment automation: Tradeshift Pay, our e-invoicing and accounts payable solution, digitises the exchange of purchasing and invoicing information between buyers and suppliers. We embed automation and AI directly into the transaction process, eliminating huge swathes of manual work. Tradeshift customers have already seen AI reduce manual interventions by as much as 99.5%. This delivers huge efficiencies and cost savings. Last year alone, we saved our customer base over three million hours of time that would otherwise have been spent fixing errors, chasing approvals and responding to supplier inquiries.
Across the world we’re seeing an accelerated push towards mandatory e-invoicing as governments digitise their taxation. Controls and specifications differ from one country to another. The result is a complex patchwork of compliance rules that businesses must follow. For businesses on the Tradeshift network, we take that pain away by embedding global compliance-as-a-service capabilities directly onto our platform.
Embedded Finance: Last summer, we announced our intention to form a joint venture with HSBC which paves the way for us to embed financial services directly into the Tradeshift experience, providing businesses with access to working capital at the point of need.
What we’re doing with HSBC is a world-first in embedded finance. One of the first areas we’re working on together is receivables financing. Large enterprises want to keep cash on hand for as long as possible and suppliers wait 60+ days to get paid. Traditional financing methods have struggled to address this gap due to limited data for risk assessment.
As a two-sided network, Tradeshift gathers data from both buyers and suppliers. Leveraging this combined dataset with HSBC will enable us to provide financing and other bank services to both sides of every transaction. This will result in faster-flowing capital across entire supply chains with the potential to create new opportunities and stimulate growth.
Marketplace commerce: We build online B2B marketplaces that we strongly believe are the future of e-procurement. In a world where more than 40% of online consumer purchases are made on marketplaces, the inflexible and often byzantine processes that dominate corporate purchasing look increasingly outdated compared with the proven convenience of consumer platforms. Our marketplace offering connects large organisations to pre-vetted suppliers in a curated purchasing environment that provides convenience, control and competitive pricing.
The B2B marketplace model is going to replace large segments of procurement over time, especially in indirect spending categories where businesses are routinely missing out on efficiencies and cost savings rising to 30% of their top-line. What we’re creating is a ‘network of marketplaces,’ accessible through our platform, that businesses can punch in and out from according to their specific purchasing needs. Crucially, this can all take place on a single platform and through a single user interface.
Who is your solution aimed at? What does your perfect client look like?
We typically work with large enterprises and mid-sized businesses across various industries that have complex procurement, supply chain, and financial processes.
Businesses that get the most from Tradeshift see us as an integral part of their wider digital transformation strategies. Our solutions span finance and procurement and conversations with prospects will typically begin at the CFO and CPO level. Ultimately, we’re looking to talk to people who want to drive long-lasting and meaningful change within their organisation.
We have a particularly strong presence in sectors such as transport and logistics, manufacturing, FMCG, retail, and pharma & healthcare, with clients including DHL, Kuehne + Nagel, and the NHS.
What is the biggest challenge Tradeshift faces?
Senior decision-makers will often tell us that their processes are already digital. Further discussion usually reveals that invoices are submitted using electronic means rather than collected in the post room. They might think of this as digital, but all they’re actually creating is an electronic copy of a set of systems and processes that had already been highlighted as failing. We spend considerable effort educating businesses on the true meaning of digitalisation and the broader transformational benefits it unlocks by connecting to a network comprising over a million potential customers and suppliers.
Why pick Tradeshift?
The common thread that underpins everything I’ve described so far is our network and the connectivity it establishes between every business that joins Tradeshift.
We are committed to achieving 100% digitalisation across every supply chain relationship. Inspired by consumer social networking sites like LinkedIn, Tradeshift facilitates connections between businesses on a single network, delivering compelling value propositions for both buyers and suppliers. Our commitment to creating value for any business that joins the Tradeshift network means suppliers onboard faster and buyers achieve their digitialisation objectives quicker.
This model creates a flywheel effect, making the platform increasingly attractive to join as more value-adding services are introduced. Partners like HSBC see Tradeshift as key to their own digital transformation initiatives and bring enormous value to businesses on the network. You simply can’t replicate this in an environment where things are not digital, or where the ecosystem is dominated by a single buyer or a single supplier.