Tradeshift, the San Francisco based provider of supply chain payments and marketplaces, this week announced the acquisition of Babelway, a provider of cloud integration technology. Babelway, which is headquartered in Belgium, with offices in the US, Australia, and Egypt, offers a SaaS-based integration platform that automates B2B data and documents. The solution allows organizations to automate cross-company processes and enables businesses to connect disparate systems without needing to purchase any additional software or hardware. With this acquisition, Tradeshift will enable businesses to more easily conduct digital global trade directly through its business commerce platform. The Babelway technology will be marketed as “Tradeshift Link”.
Tradeshift has partnered with Babelway for over six years to provide its joint customers a standardized way to connect incompatible systems. The success enabled by the joint solutions was a primary reason why Tradeshift acquired Babelway. According to Tradeshift executives, the plan for Tradeshift Link will be to accelerate the integration of disconnected systems that are used for buying, paying, and selling within an enterprise’s digital supply chain. It will also allow banks and third-party app providers to connect to the Tradeshift network, where they will be able to offer financial solutions, like supply chain financing and/or early-payment services. Tradeshift Link should be attractive to small and medium-sized sellers, as they tend to have smaller teams and resources, and this will allow them to more easily connect and work with larger buyers.
As we discussed in our briefing with the Tradeshift leadership team earlier this year (The Marketplace is the Future – A Briefing with Tradeshift), the Tradeshift platform is at the center of everything Tradeshift does. The company offers an open ecosystem that encourages third-party developers to add their own applications to the Tradeshift App store. Over the years, Tradeshift has partnered with many companies, and their app store now has a robust selection of solutions available for its customers. This includes everything from logistics to delivery, to the payments side and setting up a credit card merchant as well. Tradeshift’s original strategy was to provide as many apps as possible to participants on the platform. More recently, they have altered that strategy slightly, and are now more focused on ensuring that customers are driving as much value as possible from the apps they have.
The number of organizations that leverage the Tradeshift network continues to be impressive. The company offers a modern, mobile-friendly, platform with highly usable features, and its platform offers numerous applications to their network’s participants. Tradeshift’s vision to become the Amazon of B2B, while also providing a wealth of payment and supply chain financing options to everyone as well, is ambitious and aggressive. The acquisition of Babelway will help to extend the capabilities of the Tradeshift platform and has the potential to speed the integration process for many of its users.
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