Tradeshift: Connecting the Entire Supply Chain

As a child, Christian Lanng was fond of dismantling and successfully re-assembling his toys. This childhood passion for taking things apart and putting them back together, he says, has helped him solve many questions in the realm of supply chain management. One of the biggest questions plaguing Lanng has been how to “digitize hard-to-process, paper-based invoices from suppliers,” shares Lanng. “What I found was it’s not really a paper problem; because if you’re not connected to the suppliers, it is just the symptom of an inefficient communication process,” he says.

When everything is riding on paper—invoices, purchase orders, checks—it’s hard to manage cash flow in an optimal way, which leads to late payments for suppliers. “Globally, trillions of dollars are locked up due to late payments,” states Lanng. “This interrupts the suppliers and affects the overall market where the consumers won’t get finished goods in time and suppliers witness bankruptcy.”

Lanng’s answer to these issues is Tradeshift, a platform connecting buyers with suppliers worldwide. Tradeshift’s platform helps companies run more efficiently using cloud-based technology to improve processes like invoicing, workflow and supplier financing.

“We deliver real benefits to suppliers by letting them track invoice status from the moment they send it until it’s paid. In turn, enterprises benefit by easily connecting to their supply chains worldwide,” explains Lanng. While other business-to-business “networks” are really just two-way portals for basic administrative tasks, Tradeshift is different. “It isn’t an invoicing tool with a two-way portal tacked on; it’s a robust many-to-many network with deeply integrated capabilities like e-invoicing, collaborative workflow and financial solutions,” he adds.

To further accelerate the supply chain management process, Tradeshift created CloudScan™, a powerful approach to capturing and converting invoice data.