Disruption Zone: TradeShift
I’m a big fan of infographics, particularly the infographic below produced by TradeShift. In today’s world where a sound bite takes too long, an infographic, if done correctly, can take data and explain it clearly. That’s why the infographic shown below caught my eye.
There is a small Danish start-up company that has the potential to stand the current invoicing business model on its head. TradeShift operates out of Copenhagen and is offering free purchasing and invoicing to small companies.
Think about it for a moment. Your company makes and supplies widgets for another firm. You create an invoice, print it out, put it in an envelope and send it. Who knows, you may even send a PDF. What happens on the other end? The receiving company rekeys the data and puts it in their own system.
What would happen if there was a way that a small business could use electronic invoicing. It would save them money and money for the companies that use them – a win-win situation.
Granted, electronic invoicing is not new. EDI has been around for years, but it is fragmented. TradeShift was commissioned by the Danish government to build a smaller and lighter system for SMBs. So far, 70,000 SMBs in Denmark are online – one third of all Danish businesses.
TradeShift makes no money in providing invoices for free, but they have built a platform for external developers to use. The developers pay TradeShift to use the platform for their apps.
They have signed up some big players including TDC (a Danish telco), the Irish government, and The Co-op. First found of funding was for 200,000 euros (US $289,000) and it was rumored that PayPal was behind the second round of funding.
From their efforts, TradeShift has created the link between sustainability and taking traditional processes online (Stage 3 MPS). Based on their research here are some things to consider:
- Between 60 to 80 percent of all office waste is paper.
- Almost 10 percent of all paper invoices contain mistakes.
- 96 percent of companies wind up reissuing invoices.
Being able to tackle statistics like these with free purchasing and invoicing services could make TradeShift a company with a most disruptive idea. For more interesting infographics, please click here.
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