02 Oct 2012 Tradeshift announces new partnership with OFS Portal
Last week at EXPP I had the great pleasure of meeting Dave Wallis, Director Eastern Hemisphere (great job title) for OFS Portal. You could be forgiven for not knowing of OFS portal. OFS Portal is highly niche specializing exclusively in the Oil and Gas industry. In their own words it is a “group of diverse suppliers working together with a non-profit objective to provide standardized electronic information to B2B trading partners to facilitate e-commerce in upstream oil and gas products and services.” That is pretty specific but don’t let that mislead you in any way – there’s many industries outside of upstream oil and gas that could take a leaf out of their book. They are in many ways exemplars for purchase to pay and they’re now adding to their credentials by partnering with Tradeshift.
The agreement announced today enables OFS Portal Members to adopt Tradeshift as a platform for exchanging valuable data and transactions with the their oilfield customers through the use of open, non-proprietary standards. As a result, industry-players are able to adopt and benefit from latest technologies and services without being locked in to any one tool.
Christian Lanng, Tradeshift’s charismatic CEO sees this move as another step in freeing trading partners from proprietary standards and what he describes as “vendor lock-in”: “Historically, enterprise software companies have taken advantage of their own customers, using restrictive practices to make it as hard and financially painful as possible to move to a superior service. Initiatives like OFS Portal send a clear message to the e-commerce industry that OFS Portal Members, like trading partners in other industries, want interoperability and efficiency. We should always be looking for ways to promote e-commerce providers that offer the flexibility to allow customers to choose the best provider for a particular service without locking in either trading partner or forcing one to absorb the other’s costs. And Tradeshift will stand by them” he says.
“The driving principles of OFS Portal in promoting interoperability and efficiency align perfectly with what Tradeshift is striving to achieve for all businesses around the globe. This agreement is a great step forward for our members, their customers and our whole industry. It cements interoperability at the heart of the oil and gas business, creating new opportunity and freedom for all,” stated William Le Sage, OFS Portal CEO. “The return on investment in e-commerce capabilities is dramatically increased through speed of adoption and flexibility. Tradeshift’s flexible business model reduces the reluctance of suppliers to adopt e-commerce connectivity and this is critical for our industry.”
Pete Loughlin can be found on twitter @peteloughlin
