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In B2B transactions, understanding how a prospective supplier or buyer’s digital landscape aligns with yours as well as their integration capabilities can be a powerful way to identify opportunities and drive prioritization as you build your B2B Connected Commerce network.
More than 4,500 global enterprises leverage TradeCentric’s B2B Connected Commerce solutions, which have delivered 15,000+ individual trading connections. TradeCentric’s proprietary Trading Partner Analysis enables customers to expand their trading connections by leveraging this expansive and growing network.
This blog explores how the Trading Partner Analysis works and the value it delivers for TradeCentric customers.
How the Trading Partner Analysis works
Your organization provides the TradeCentric Channel Development team with a list of companies for analysis. You can tailor your list based on your organization’s objectives and priorities. Some examples include:
- Top customers or suppliers
- Prospective customers
- Targeted industries
The team will then conduct a Trading Partner Analysis, which begins by cross-referencing your list against TradeCentric’s network to identify which companies may already be transacting through our platform.
The analysis delivers a detailed breakdown for each “match” between your list and TradeCentric’s network, including the connection types and platform they use, the number of connections, and the integration solutions they have deployed, such as PunchOut, Purchase Order, and Invoice Automation.
Benefits of the analysis
TradeCentric aims to help trading partners connect with each other and build mutually profitable relationships with minimal friction. The Trading Partner Analysis is a crucial tool in this process.
Organizations benefit from:
- Faster channel development – Understanding prospective partners’ existing connections aids targeted channel development. It gives a realistic view of the integration effort needed, and enables the business to ‘hit the ground running’ with each prospect.
- More opportunities to connect – Widen your total addressable market by identifying which suppliers and buyers may be transacting on eProcurement platforms that were previously unknown.
- Enabled sales teams – A sales team that is equipped with strong knowledge of a prospect’s existing connections and platforms is better equipped to engage effectively.
- Reduced friction and increased confidence through the whole engagement – A shared, comprehensive understanding of a partner’s Connected Commerce setup facilitates the entire process. The Trading Partner Analysis helps curate a target list to help prioritize potential integrations, enabling organizations to move more quickly through the pipeline with a qualified list of Trading Partners.
While these benefits can apply to any type of engagement, they are particularly valuable for organizations that may not have the resources or bandwidth to directly analyze prospects and opportunities themselves.
Maximizing value from TradeCentric’s Trading Partner Analysis
Just like individual human relationships, trading partnerships can be complicated, and it’s the partners in the relationship that need to take responsibility for making them work.
Maximizing value from TradeCentric’s Trading Partner Analysis is about using the information it provides intelligently and owning the relationship as well as the end-to-end process to deliver success.
Each TradeCentric Trading Partner Analysis provides a report intended to support this process, giving:
- Recommendations, for example, “there are X connections in total, including some high priority accounts on Y & Z platforms – this could be a good starting point”
- Considerations, such as “Do you have an existing relationship with the eProcurement/eCommerce team at any of these accounts?”
- Best Practice guidance, like “Some platforms may be less complex, so you may want to prioritize ones that are already connected to the TradeCentric network.”
- Exploratory Questions to gather information about partner readiness from end users and procurement, such as “Do you have requirements for suppliers to be added to your platform?”
Make decisions with confidence through the Trading Partner Analysis
B2B Connected Commerce is increasingly key to digital success. Understanding how your buyers, suppliers and prospects connect is an important part of building the most effective connections, and TradeCentric’s Trading Partner Analysis can help to get you started in the right place.
To find out more, reach out to me on LinkedIn, or contact us.
