More than a year ago, we founded Tradeshift with a big vision. We imagined all companies in the world would be connected on one network, conducting business together in real-time. We have broken some ground, but there is still a long way to go before our vision is realized. This led me to reflect why is it so hard to change the way businesses work?
To understand why this change is needed, just stop and think about how your business software operates today. If you are like 99% of all companies out there, you are using a stand alone, isolated software solution (no matter if it’s in the cloud or on a server) which is meant for paper input. This input is typically facilitated by a small army of people carrying the core data of business, invoices and orders to the terminal typing them in one after another.
We have earlier covered the massive cost of this process, but I think it goes beyond that, we have become traumatized by the amount of paper we push around everyday in every company. The most innovative solutions we can think of is to outsource the process of handling the paper to countries where it’s cheaper to hire people to do this typing in state-of-the-art shared service centers. On the software side, the software has moved to the cloud, but it’s still not connected, we have exactly the same features as before, maybe a little bit more user friendly, a different price model, but in true essence it’s just a faster horse.
Still in 2011, business software is nothing more than a self-service paper input system combined with a fancy calculator generating the reports you need for your boss, the authorities or anybody else who requests information.
Imagine that you were connected to all your business contacts directly, that you would be sending data directly to their systems and receiving information in the same way. That reports you needed were calculated in real-time directly from the cloud as the data was delivered. That your business software was not focused at helping you complete a manual process, but instead made it easier to do business, to connect, share, interact and ultimately support your decisions.
With Tradeshift we have started down that road, we assume that to be digitally connected with your trading partners is the default, that 100% electronic connectivity with your supply chain is not only possible, but should always be the goal. That is why we at Tradeshift have connections instead of contacts, and that we always generate invoices as XML as a default and only generate a PDF when you need to share information with someone outside the network.
This is just the beginning, we have a vision, but we are still experimenting on how to get there, and we can’t get there alone. That is why we launched an app framework for Tradeshift which allows anyone to build their own apps, which extends the usability and possibilities of the core platform. And that is finally where you come in dear reader, how do you imagine the future of business software?
