The International Chambers of Commerce (the "ICC") fosters and supports the development of international trade.
In recent years, the ICC has specifically focussed on digitisation of trade and the ICC UK has been one of the major sponsors of the new English law enabling digital trade documents (the "Electronic Trade Documents Act 2023").
This has been driven by the global ICC initiative, the Centre for Digital Trade & Innovation - the "C4DTI" - set up in conjunction with the Department for International Trade.
This year, the ICC has shortlisted PrimaTrade and one of its clients for two awards as part of its role in fostering the development of digital trade:
PrimaTrade itself as Best Crossborder Technology Solutions Provider (for digital trade)
Boohoo Group, one of our clients, as Best Corporate Adopter (for digital trade)
The digitisation of trade is at the heart of our business - and we focus on digitising trade in manufactured goods. This 1 minute video sets out what we achieve:
In 2023, our technology was used to digitise approaching 20,000 individual shipments, matching 70,000 purchase orders to 30,000 digital invoices - and digitising around 100,000 documents from 100s of suppliers in 22 countries.
Our clients saved collectively millions of US$ by accelerating payments to their suppliers using our "cash against data" system. Moreover, quite a proportion of these early payments were funded externally by trade financiers so that this P&L benefit was earned without any change to the timing of operating cash flows and the treatment of outstanding invoices as accounts payable.
We thank the ICC and the ICC C4DTI Awards very much for their recognition of our digitisation technology and the amazing results achieved by our clients who have trusted our platform and their own processes; they have moved way beyond pilots and one-off test trades and now operate digital supply chains at scale.
Achieving digitisation in global trade generates significant macro-economic benefits and helps to close the US$2.5 trillion trade gap that particularly affects smaller suppliers in emerging markets (see here for how).
But digitisation will only happen when the participants in the trade process (importing buyers and exporting suppliers) get real and direct benefits that more than outweigh the people, process and technology changes involved.
Here at Prima, we have cracked this code. Our clients are saving multiples of any costs that might be involved in adjusting their operations to new digital realities.
The future of trade is digital.