Today, IBM witnessing substantial digital disruption in trade and supply chain financing. This disruption is primarily driven by global events, geopolitics, evolving regulations, compliance needs, technological advancements, innovation, and improved access to capital.
When closely examining these disruptors, it becomes evident that various factors can influence global trade and supply chain financing. These factors can encompass a wide range, from rising inflation (with the potential to exert margin pressures) to geopolitics (which can affect globalization and steer shifts toward friend-shoring) and near-shoring. Simultaneously, intricate and fragmented supply chains can introduce challenges like ensuring supply chain compliance and mitigating fraud. The importance of supplier visibility and traceability is on the rise, contributing to the attainment of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) objectives.
These are just a few of the numerous critical factors driving transformative changes in trade and supply chain processes.
Traditionally, IBM witnessed manual, paper-heavy trade processes that generated substantial data. Yet, this data often gets isolated, leading to complications, delays, and higher expenses. Given the growing demands of global trade, organizations are now adopting digitization, standardization, and collaboration to expedite value realization and lower costs.
Technology is playing an important role in reshaping the landscape of trade and supply chain financing. It facilitates the connection of disjointed manual processes and platforms into a data-driven, interconnected trade ecosystem. By employing intelligent workflows, siloed processes can be integrated, enabling the smooth and automated exchange of financial, informational, and physical supply chain data within a distributed network.
Through these capabilities, a unified source of truth can be established across all involved parties, fostering increased trust among trading partners. This approach offers users novel and more efficient methods for conducting and financing global trade.
Digitization, in conjunction with industry-standard practices and collaboration, can yield a range of advantages. For instance, banks can achieve real-time visibility into their supply chains, eliminate paper-based procedures and the associated manual work, expedite working capital optimization, enhance the precision of cash-flow forecasting, fortify transactions against cybersecurity threats, bolster supply chain resilience, and unlock broader procure-to-pay benefits.
At IBM, they acknowledge that this transformation necessitates the adoption of a platform strategy that elevates the supporting ecosystem. Their goal is to achieve this through next-generation ‘as a Service’ business models.
As organizations seek to modernize their trade finance operations, IBM have harnessed the full spectrum of IBM’s technology and consulting expertise to create a Connected Trade Platform tailored for the industry.
In line with their approach, they are procuring digitally native business-process capabilities from various fintech companies, recognizing that no two banks are likely to have identical sets of applications or processes.
IBM’s platform strategy is crafted to construct secure infrastructure tailored for regulated business processes, aiding clients in their compliance efforts. It is also designed with a unified infrastructure control plane to simplify adoption and usage for banks. By offering a plug-and-play integration framework for banking-specific backend systems, the platform facilitates the seamless flow of financial transactions from the front office to the back office.
At IBM, they consider it important that this industry-specific platform is optimized to foster growth and reduce risk for all participants in the ecosystem.
At the heart of this platform is IBM Cloud for Financial Services, a pioneering cloud infrastructure designed to cater to the unique demands of regulated industries. It comes equipped with embedded laws, rules, and regulations right from the start. Clients utilizing IBM Cloud for Financial Services within IBM’s Connected Trade Platform can leverage technical know-how to facilitate cloud deployment while meeting their compliance needs.
Additionally, artificial intelligence (AI) plays a significant role. While AI is poised to enhance productivity for banks and corporate buyers, it necessitates responsible, transparent, and explainable AI to revolutionize workflows and offer cross-border assurance. IBM’s technologies include watsonx.ai (the next-generation enterprise studio for AI developers to train, validate, and fine-tune AI models for trade), watsonx.governance (an AI governance toolkit to facilitate trusted AI workflows), and watsonx Orchestrate (for automating back-office transactions using digital labor).
Finally, IBM Consulting’s Integrated Trade Finance Advisory, Integration practices, and Managed Services capabilities, supported by over 2,000 professionals in this field, are assisting clients in expediting their trade digitization efforts.
As organizations aim to enhance trade and supply finance operations, the present moment offers an opportunity to embrace digitization for quicker and more efficient transactions, all while maintaining a focus on security and compliance.
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