Conor O’Riordan

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Conor O’Riordan / CEO, Tradefacilitate.com

Identifying corporate mentoring opportunities – Ireland needs to grab hold of a potentially ‘missed opportunity’. I am referring to ‘corporate mentoring and partner resource’. In Ireland this is a seriously underestimated, proven model.

In my case, Microsoft is that corporate mentor, with the partner resource that elevated Tradefacilitate.com to its global success today. With Microsoft’s global network of over 900,000 partners along with their proven cloud technology as well as best practice mentoring through their Bizspark network, this is a model other Irish entrepreneurs could access and benefit from. Not accessing this underutilised global partner network is a missed opportunity for every Irish entrepreneur operating in the technology sector, in pursuit of success on a global level.

Innovation and entrepreneurship are seamless partners but ideas only convert to reality when they are commercially successful. This is when they create jobs and revenue and stimulate more innovation locally. In Ireland we have this proven corporate mentoring and partner resource at our disposal along with proven global executioners. I believe if more Irish entrepreneurs were able to access this under-utilised global partner network opportunity locally, it would have a major impact on our economic prosperity. The private sector must lead in this regard, and show the way forward. This, as a real means of elevating SMEs to the next level of growth, should be exploited to its fullest.

If we work in collaboration we can achieve this goal.

About Conor O’Riordan

ConorO’Riordan is a paper-free trade evangelist with over 25 years’ experience in international trade as a SME entrepreneur prior to founding Tradefacilitate. As CEO of Tradefacilitate he continues to evangalise globally on the benefits of paper free trade. After a successful EU validation process,Tradefaciliate now commercially services SMEs, logistics partners globally on the Microsoft Azure Cloud technology as a Global Partner to the Microsoft Corporation.

Conor has led the EU clearview SME validated project funded by the EU DG Info and is a past Chair of the UNCEFACT Digital paper technical global business group. In October 2007 Conor represented the SME voice in transatlantic trade at Trans Atlantic Business Dialogue (TABD) forum between the EU and the USA private and public sector on facilitating secure competitive transatlantic trade.

The EU consortium validated EU and cross border African trade. The project has been highlighted by the OECD as a reference for the opportunity paper free trade presents Africa in paper free trade and the case study produced by Trinity College was subsequently published.

Conor’s constant theme is in line with EU 2020 policies in that the private sector has to lead on delivering solutions and creating awareness globally of the benefits of going paper free in trade for SMEs. SMEs are the backbone of every national economy and global trade and account for over 80 per cent of all trade transactions globally by volume.

About Tradefacilitate.com

Tradefacilitate.com is an online EU-validated service which enables the EU Small to Medium-sized Enterprise (SME) trader and their supply chain providers to be compliant with EU customs from January 1st 2011. It facilitates the EU trader by allowing their supply chain actors to rapidly and seamlessly interface with one another and the relevant EU and cross border national customs authorities in the processing of all the tasks related to intra EU and cross-border trade compliant with EU paper-free manner; from order/invoice information exchange, to customs clearance expedition.

Today the Tradefacilitate service is commercially deployed by EU traders, EU freight forwarders and their cross border networks. The company is solely focused on servicing the SME trading community and ensuring a compliant competitive cross border trade in line with EU and Global customs legislation. The commercial service available today was validated by the EU in an ETEN eighteen month project between 2007 and 2009 and, as part of the validation process, Tradefacilitate had to demonstrate that its service could provide the EU trader with global scalability and security. The EU is committed to “cutting red tape” by €124 billion in EU2020 and the move to paper free trade by EU customs (2008-2013) is a key contributor to the EU 2020 target.

A key feature of the new EU customs requirements is that EU traders must seek approval for their goods to be to loaded in advance of any goods being loaded or shipped to or from the EU. After 400 years of global trade based on trade data coming after the goods, trade data must be now sent in an advanced notification process and in a paper free format. A new Advance Trade Notification (ATN) puts the onus on key data collation on the trader.