Ahoy, captains of industry! Today, we embark on a journey through the stormy waters of trade financing! Supply Chain Management is hot. Supply Chain Visibility is even more alluring. Nearly daily, you can read articles or join webinars about how important visibility has become in managing cargo worldwide. However! It's not just about moving physical goods from one place to another; it's also about the financial transactions that make that trade possible. Without trade finance, we wouldn't have a global economy. Trade finance is the backbone of the worldwide economy. It links people, businesses, and countries in a web of trust and credit. But there's a problem: The World Trade Organization estimates that US$ 2-5 trillion in trade finance capacity is needed to "just" enable a rapid recovery from the consequences of the pandemic. And there is a second problem: 1 in 2 SMEs don't receive the trade financing they need. This means they also lack the money to inve...
In a world faced with the prospect of tightening supplies, higher energy costs heightened geopolitical risk, and strained transportation networks, advanced supply chain technologies will become mission-critical for many more companies. The supply chain task is not an enterprise problem; it is an end-to-end network problem involving multiple enterprises. Therefore, the solution does not lie in fixing one link in the chain but in devising a community.