As part of the launch of Alibaba.com in New Zealand, our Chief Product and Supply Chain Officer Adrian Collier recently joined Paul Gestro, International Trade Consultant at ASB Bank, Alvin Wang, CEO of Sky Distribution, and Pier Smulders, General Manager New Zealand at Alibaba Group, for a global B2B insights webinar.

The panel discussed challenges to trade, including costs and compliance, and how digitalisation can help to combat these challenges while enabling businesses to scale.

“Digitalisation helps with efficiency, it helps with effectiveness, and we’re seeing a rise in compliance requirements globally – whether that’s ESG requirements, or something more typical. For example, there is a particular jurisdiction where there is now a requirement for agricultural requirements to fill in another form. From an exporter’s point of view, that has a real impact on the way their workflow operates today,” said Adrian.

“You have to have your process and information around the process in good shape, and, I would argue, well digitised, in order to be able to react to changing compliance requirements and work with your providers to try and use that data to satisfy the requirements as sufficiently as you can.”

Pier summarised the session well in closing – “We can’t stop the increasing complexity of data that’s required for global trade. The digital tools allow you to turn that complexity to your advantage, turn the threat into an opportunity. If you really want to scale, it’s going to be hard without embracing technology.”

If you’d like to view the webinar recording, you can find this on our YouTube channel here: TradeWindow + Alibaba Global B2B Insights