But it’s important to remember this is a fundamental yes/ no decision – it includes a break point where some will decide the value proposition doesn’t suit them and their story stops there. So a massive problem arises if you place this decision at the exact same point as the decision to connect with you electronically.

When suppliers have to consider the decisions of “do I want to connect with my buyer electronically” and “do I want to pay for a new service that may offer me value”, you’re going to start losing people from the process for the wrong reasons.

Simpler Supplier Decisions

We think it’s absolutely essential that these decisions remain separate for your suppliers. The proposition of connecting with you electronically, for free, is simple and strong in itself. And when you layer on top of that the value of Apps like free Tradeshift E-invoicing, connectors to accounting software and other advantages of the platform such as getting paid early, we find it becomes even clearer.

But most importantly, even if in future they choose to buy Tradeshift Apps alongside the free E-invoicing, that decision becomes entirely disconnected from whether they want to connect to your enterprise electronically. So more of them are willing to make that free connection with you on the platform and the result is onboarding rates that haven’t been possible in the industry before.

We think the historical lack of this distinction has held back supplier adoption over the years. And many of the services currently flying the flag of “supplier value” to justify supplier fees are plainly more interested in their own bottom line than getting 100% of your suppliers on board.

Tradeshift’s goals align with yours. We want to connect all your suppliers to the platform with free accounts and free e-invoicing because we believe that’s the only way to build a universal marketplace for connected business software. We’re building a new economy, a new way to distribute business Apps — and a new future for all businesses.

If this strikes a chord with you, it might be time to consider a platform that keeps those decisions separate — but beware, even today, they’re in short supply.

Today we announce a solution that will make cross-border trade much easier.

Tradeshift and Invoiceware International have joined forces to alleviate a massive headache for Latin American e-business – ensuring compliance while supporting domestic and cross-border invoicing. The largest companies in the world depend on IWI to ensure their ebusiness practices are up to snuff with the Latin American laws and regulations – Siemens, Microsoft and Coca-cola – to name just a few.

The partnership allows domestic companies and multinationals on the Tradeshift platform to transact with Latin America and know their business documents are compliant thanks to the integration of Invoiceware International’s automated three-way validation match.

When it comes to e-business adoption, Latin America gets a gold star. E-invoicing is mandatory in countries like Mexico, Argentina and Brazil. In fact Brazil has the highest e-invoicing penetration in the global B2B market.

That said, it is also highly regulated. Companies wishing to conduct business within these countries, whether domestic or foreign, must abide by very strict guidelines (which are constantly changing) to avoid fines, criminal charges or even the total shutdown of their operations.

It’s an intimidating set of circumstances to face when looking to expand operations. Together, Tradeshift and Invoiceware International are delivering solutions to the problems faced by Latin America and the global enterprises striving to do business in the region.

And businesses are indeed striving. Latin America is a region ripe with growing sales opportunities, acquisitions and investments – Brazil alone is preparing to host both the World Cup and the Olympics over the next three years.

As we move closer and closer to connecting every business on the planet on one shared platform, we see this partnership as a huge milestone. Latin America has proven that e-business is the way of the future. They’ve been leading the way.

You may have noticed that Tradeshift is entering a new phase. With a lineup including Tradeshift E-invoicing, Tradeshift CloudScan and Tradeshift Instant Payments, not to mention more and more Apps from third parties, the products built on top of Tradeshift really are taking on a life of their own.

As 5m companies loom to adopt Tradeshift and global enterprises like DHL, Vestas and MITIE integrate our platform, we decided these products have earned the right for a whole new set of positions to support them and help them grow.

The future of Tradeshift Products

It’s time to introduce Mihir Nanavati, Tradeshift’s first ever SVP of Product. Mihir cut his teeth leading product teams at Adobe and YouSendIt — creating the gameplans that would lead innovative online products to global success.

As a business, his experience fits the next step for us. When you have a platform that’s built to accommodate all business interactions, all business processes, the potential product opportunity is endless — not just for us, but for all the companies building Tradeshift Apps to run on the platform. That’s where discipline becomes key.

Market Development from Oracle, Google, Microsoft

But products without markets don’t get very far and we take it very seriously when we call Tradeshift a global platform for business interactions.

Expanding our Market Development team, Jovan Marjanovic becomes our first SVP of Market Development, bringing decades of experience and relationships at Oracle and SAP to play. Tradeshift already has a foothold in every corner of the Earth but Jovan and his team are laying the seeds for those markets to explode with new activity and opportunity.

Jovan is joined by our new VP of Global Strategy, Andy Huang, who joins from Google, after building a career of experience in regions like China and Korea. And alongside him, Patrick Svenburg takes on the role of VP of Strategic Business Development, bringing with him many years experience as Director of Platform Strategy at Microsoft.

Amazing new talent at all levels

Having hired nearly 50 people in the last couple of months, we could literally keep you here all day. For example, we haven’t even mentioned Catherine Liao, who brings her exceptional talent from organisations like Cisco and the World Health Organisation to become our new Head of Presales.

But hopefully the picture is becoming clear by now. Tradeshift’s mission is attracting some of the finest talent in the industry away from the goliaths of yesteryear. And ultimately, what it comes down to (and how we know these people will be such a good fit here is the belief in a big idea — a powerful ‘why’ that sits at the heart of every working day.

Like the rest of the team, they understand that what we achieve here could change the way the entire world works.

If you think you’d like to help us achieve that, we’re still hiring. Check out the latest roles here and join the ride.

First, on May 30th, we’ll be discussing how Tradeshift addresses many of the challenges faced by finance, AP and shared services departments. Find out how you can get closer to the companies you do business with in the fastest growing network of connected suppliers. The Tradeshift platform offers a wide range of tools designed to maximize efficiency while lowering overall operational costs.

Register today
Maximize Value, Minimize Cost
May 30, 2013
10:30 AM BST
11:30 AM CET

Next, we’ll be hosting a webinar on June 5th where we’ll discuss, in depth, the recent partnership we formed with Intuit and the benefits it delivers to global enterprises. Tradeshift VP of Global Sales, Christian Hjorth will be joined by Intuit’s Roger Bass. Find out what the partnership means to the enterprise market, what the current integration consists of and what the future of the partnership holds.

Register Today
The Tradeshift & Intuit Partnership
June 5, 2013
10:30 AM PST
1:30 PM EST

Keep an eye on our events page as we have more informative webinars and events planned throughout the spring and summer.

Even before the news of 5m+ Quickbooks users joining the Tradeshift platform, we beat all our competitors to the biggest deal in the history of our industry, hired some of the most talented people you will ever meet and are putting the finishing touches on the biggest change to Tradeshift you’ve ever seen (tweet us #showmethenewshift or email hello@tradeshift.com if you’re interested in an early look.)

But let’s just lay this out for a moment so you can grasp key highlights of recent months. This is the first in a three part series where we’ll look at some of the highlights of 2013 so far.

To begin, let’s talk business. Some of these are already out there — but alongside them is an exclusive preview of a few more that we’ll be revealing in full very soon.

Some of our latest customers

• Deutsche Post DHL: Global Fortune 100, one of the biggest companies ever to exist — with supplier volumes to match

• A massive public sector organisation: 130k suppliers — saving money straight into the Government’s purse.

• A leading, global apparel brand: This company is starting by bringing 20,000 of its suppliers to Tradeshift — but perhaps more exciting is how it’s working with us to develop new enterprise Apps.

• A global healthcare innovator dedicated to improving patient care: With 15,000 suppliers – and products sold worldwide through subsidiaries and distributors, they require an agile e-business solution as innovative as they are.

• One of the most innovative global publishers: Working with 5,000 suppliers in a tough industry, this publisher, whose content is consumed around the world, understands that replacing its old systems with an improved electronic platform can help it stay competitive on the global stage.

And that’s alongside an already incredible lineup including brands like NHS ASP, Vestas Wind Systems, MITIE, DSM and the French Government. Check out the growing list of announcements here.

Keep an eye on the Tradeshift blog for our next update, which will tell you a little more about the kind of talent that our mission is attracting.

But let’s spare a moment’s thought for the suppliers who you won’t see there. The spectre of suppliers who will never go to such events. The suppliers who will never join a business platform that charges them to connect with you.

The suppliers who expect that platform to provide them with more than just one basic function. And what about the suppliers on other platforms that won’t be able to interact with you because interoperability isn’t supported?

Giving up the ghost

If you go with a platform that ignores this majority of small and medium businesses, they will be forever lost to you, as if living on another plane of business existence. They’ll be like ghosts, frustratingly incorporeal to your network in all the ways that matter.

Alternatively, you could force them onto the platform with you. Make them pay for doing the right thing and working with your electronically. Even though they don’t want to use the account for anything other than getting paid by you. Zombies are better than ghosts, right?

There’s a real threat lurking in the shadows of our industry at the moment — one that risks “SAPping” the life out of your suppliers if you aren’t careful. They’ll do everything in their power to make you believe suppliers are on board with a network that cuts them off from the others, taxes them for working with you electronically and for most, offers nothing beyond e-invoicing.

It’s not the only way

You can offer your suppliers a free platform to connect with you.

You can offer your suppliers a platform that’s interoperable with other networks and with a design that makes it easy to use.

You can offer your suppliers a platform where E-invoicing is just the start and Apps activate everything from accounting connectors to payments integration, visualisations and more.

If you’re anything like us, you’ll see why the alternative is a pretty haunting prospect.

1. Find cheaper suppliers
2. Gain more value from current suppliers.

Most enterprises are working hard to increase the proportion of their spend that goes through the procurement system. This is not surprising since it means it’s neatly sent on its journey by POs, making it easier to track and manage.

But as much as 80% of orders still end up being non-PO spend, lacking these benefits and causing issues for the enterprise that hopes to gather insight and advantages from making these processes electronic.

So, instead of spending time searching for procurement tools to help you constantly replace that other 20%, or banging your head against the brick wall working out how to get the rest of your suppliers to start paying to use a procurement tool, isn’t it time to focus on how you gain more value from the 80%?

We were at the Swedish P2P Summit recently and this conversation came up again and again — so here’s a rundown of how you make that 80% work harder for you, all while building stronger and more valuable relationships with your suppliers.

Procurement mining

Traditional procurement strategies of re-negotiating contracts and trying to relentlessly bid the price down are simple and intuitive. Replacing expensive suppliers with cheaper ones perhaps even more so.

But every time you mine these areas, you’re mining a resource of good will and positive relationship potential. Every supplier knows the experience of being squeezed by their largest buyer so that they can shave a little off the costs. Perhaps you could argue it has been one of the only effective options for a long time.

This is changing. In the area of non-PO spend, the real challenge to tracking it is that there isn’t naturally such a clear path to make the origins of the business interactions electronic. Using a single platform that you share with your suppliers transforms that instantly.

Instead of a threatening relationship by leveraging your control over those companies to shave away their profit margins, you can introduce them to a way of working that saves them time, hooks into their other systems and processes and offers Apps that will provide them even more value. You’re adding to the value of the relationship to create more profit for everyone.

Peace with paper

Of course, there are always stragglers. But a platform like Tradeshift is built to help them transition in their own time. Tradeshift Cloudscan® makes it simple for an enterprise to either process incoming paper internally, using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to translate the physical document, or apply the same technology to PDFs and other formats to achieve the same goals.

100% electronic spend, including non-PO orders. Using a platform that makes your suppliers lives easier, not harder. And a platform that, once you’ve forged the connections to those other companies, is open enough that it can be used to run any future business process with them.

This opened a lot of eyes at P2P Summit. If it sounds too good to be true, maybe you should have a conversation with us and find out why the truth is sometimes simpler than you think.

This afternoon’s event is specifically focused on the public sector and I will take part in the keynote address: Government & Education Cloud Computing with Amazon Web Services.

Attendees will see how AWS is helping support public sector customers by lowering costs while increasing capabilities. There are a number wonderful speakers on the docket and I’m very happy to amongst such great company.

We’ll be sure to post a recap of the event soon.

A business platform can result in more than 60-80% savings vs paper. And that’s just one of the major findings in the 2013 report which you can download from our website’s resource center now.

Whether you’re in the public sector or private, this report uncovers the enormous value organizations can gain by implementing e-invoicing. Hopefully it will be clear to you why we’re so keen to support Bruno’s work.

• The European public sector could save €40 with e-invoicing, only 10% of which has been achieved today.

• The cost of processing an invoice can be reduced from €35-50 to €1 with a platform like Tradeshift

• It’s a key EU Commission priority to ensure SMEs get paid within 30 days

• The UK public sector could save €4.4 billion, London could save €200m alone

• And that’s assuming just 60% go with structured XML as used in Tradeshift

• 61% of UK enterprises are planning supply chain finance projects

Read the rest by visiting our website’s resource center. You can download the entire report for free.

The event is an international challenge which focuses on space exploration. As noted on the International Space Apps Challenge Website:

“The event embraces collaborative problem solving with a goal of producing relevant open-source solutions to address global needs applicable to both life on earth and life in Space.”

Thinking outside the box and working collaboratively is what drives Tradeshift, so of course we said yes when provided the opportunity to participate. We can’t wait to see what innovative and potentially world-changing ideas and apps surface over the weekend.

You can find out more about the challenge by visiting their website. We’ll be sure to bring you a recap of the weekend’s outcome early next week!