COVID-19 CHANGED
1 HOW
GLOBAL TRADE FOREVER
TRADE RELATIONSHIPS & TARIFFS
2 HOW
ARE AFFECTING TRADE WORLDWIDE

3 DIGITALISATION ON TRADE
THE IMPACT OF

DE-GLOBALISATION – A NEW WAY

4 TO TRADE BUT WILL IT STICK?

From crisis to opportunity:what’s the future of trade?

The impact
of digitalisation
on trade

May 2021

3

COVID-19 CHANGED
1 HOW
GLOBAL TRADE FOREVER

TRADE RELATIONSHIPS & TARIFFS
2 HOW
ARE AFFECTING TRADE WORLDWIDE

3 DIGITALISATION ON TRADE
THE IMPACT OF

DE-GLOBALISATION – A NEW WAY

4 TO TRADE BUT WILL IT STICK?

In some sectors digital transformations that would
normally have taken years have been completed injust a few months.
Andreas Tesch

Audience Q&A

2What are the big things coming down the track that weneed to get on board with now?
The future is already here. It’s just not evenly distributed.
It’s going to be a continuation of some of the things thatwe’ve seen start to disrupt how we work lately.
Automation, machine learning and artificial intelligenceare clearly going to be dominant for all sorts of industries.
Quantum computing, and new forms of massive dataprocessing in real time are going to be huge. We’regoing to be able to simulate fast and cheap versions of
the world we’re in, we’re going to be able to track every
aspect of a supply chain using sensors and connected
networks at every step. We’re all going to have to startcarbon accounting.
David Rowan

THE IMPACT OF DIGITALISATION ON TRADEThe impact of digitalisation on trade
In the series of webinars, From crisis to opportunity:what’s the future of trade? we have been exploring someof the key issues affecting trade in 2021. As the Fourth
Industrial Revolution gains pace, and Covid-19 leads toan increasing number of businesses, organisations andeven individuals adopting digital tools, we wanted to look
more closely at the impact of digitalisation on trade.
Perhaps appropriately, we used digital tools to hosta webinar and broadcast it around the world, and inviteda panel to provide insight and thoughts for further
discussion. Our panellists featured the Founding Editorof WIRED’s UK edition and investor in technology startups, David Rowan, the Founder and Managing Directorof Trusted Shops, Jean-Marc Noël, the Executive Director
International Credit at Ingram Micro, Frédéric Wittemans,
and the Director of Strategy & Corporate Development
Atradius, Dirk Hagener.
Our panellists’ views do not necessarily reflect the viewsof Atradius. Any observations or reflections shared during
the webinar and captured in this white paper should not
be taken as Atradius insight or advice. This webinar was
introduced by Chief Market Officer Atradius, Andreas Teschand moderated by journalist, Daisy McAndrew.

Key themes
Trends in digitalisation and trade
Digitalisation has accelerated during the pandemic,
affecting many areas of business life. What are themain trends?
Digitalisation and ecommerce
Online shopping experienced a huge surge during
the lockdowns. What are the main implications forretailers?
Customer satisfaction and trust
What role does trust play in digital transactions,
how is this impacting brand reputations and how
can businesses negotiate this safely?
Why buy when you can rent the latest model?
How are technological advances impacting
distribution and supply chains? What is the roleof developments such as Everything as a Service?
Human interaction: is it over?
How can businesses find and employ new talent,and interact with colleagues and with customers?
Will a hybrid model be the new normal?
Technology and data
How can businesses use technology such as AI
to assess credit quality? How is Atradius adjusting its
value proposition to cater for trends in digitalisation?

3
THE IMPACT OF DIGITALISATION ON TRADEMain trends in digitalisation
Acceleration of digital adoption“Covid-19 means that the inevitable suddenly becomes
immediate.” The digital commentator and tech start-up
investor, David Rowan, is unequivocal in his assertion.
The strongest trend currently hitting digital markets is
not about the latest invention or the hottest IPO. It is that
digital transformations, that should have taken several
years, were suddenly completed in a few short months.
He is not a lone voice identifying this phenomenon. His
fellow webinar panellists echoed this view with observations
from their own experiences. “As far as trade and ecommerce
is concerned, you can see that in 2020, you leapt forward
five years,” said Jean-Marc Noël, CEO of Trusted Shops.
Frédéric Wittemans, Executive Director International Credit
at Ingram Micro, said: “The pandemic has really accelerated
stuff. So we are really seeing a massive growth in cloud
solutions. There’s huge demand in cloud platforms.”
Trend watchers have also noted the pandemic-driven
acceleration of digitalisation. Internet and new technologies
analyst Mary Meeker has published an Internet Trends
Report every year since 1995. Last year she broke with thattradition and, perhaps in recognition of the enormity ofwhat she was witnessing, published a different report withcolleagues at her technology investment firm, Bond, titled
Our New World. Looking at digital transformation, Bond’s
assessment concurs with our panel: “Many of these offlineto-online trends have been in place for a while – Covid-19
just accelerated them.”¹ The World Economic Forum’s Chief

Economists Outlook 2021 notes: “the pandemic has also
sped up the automation of more tasks.”² The OECD’s Digital
Economic Outlook records the weight given to digital issues
by governments: “By mid-2020, 34 OECD countries had
put in place a national digital strategy co-ordinated at
the highest levels of government, and they are devoting
more attention to emerging digital technologies such as AI,
blockchain and 5G infrastructure.³

Audience Poll #1
TO WHAT EXTENT DO YOU THINK/BELIEVECORPORATES ARE READY TO ADOPT SOME OF
THESE TRENDS?

41%

40% 30% 23% 5%

OUR BUSINESSMODELWILL NOT BE
IMPACTEDAT ALLHAVE ALREADYADOPTED
SOME OFTHESE
TRENDS

STARTED
IMPLEMENTATION

IN THEPLANNING
STAGE

NOT
READY
YET

IoT, Robotic Process Automation and machine learning
Additional trends in digitalisation include the increasing
automation of tasks previously done by people, particularlyin the field of data analysis. This includes machine learningand artificial intelligence. In the world of trade, the Internetof Things, IoT is predicted to have a big impact with sensors
and connected networks enabling us to track every aspectof the supply chain. As David notes, we have alreadyhad “an impetus in the last year to make sure it works.
If you are trying to track the delivery of protective medical

1 Bond: Our New World 2020. 2 World Economic Forum: Chief Economists Outlook 2021. 3 OECD: Digital Economic Outlook November 2020.

THE IMPACT OF DIGITALISATION ON TRADEYou are at risk of becoming ‘Kodak-ed’, of
becoming a company that focuses onyesterday’s successful profitable way of doing
something, as digital realities radically change.
David Rowan

equipment from China to the west. If you are trying tounderstand how to get computer chips to your car factorywhen there are problems in getting them into the supply
chain. Obviously, we need real time clarity about whereparts are, how long it’s going to take to get them.”

Audience Q&A

Such trends are already evident in the freight-forwarding
start-ups building software systems that automate processes
such as bills of lading and technology such as Robotic
Process Automation, which is software designed to automate
repetitive back-office digital tasks normally performedby people. David also predicts that machine learning anddata analytics are going to be important for future climate
emissions monitoring. He said: “Every company is now underpressure from regulators, shareholders and customers to becarbon neutral, and accountable. And suddenly, I’m seeing
digitisation platforms springing up from everywhere, there’s
a whole bunch of them in places like Berlin, to try and help
measure and hold organisations accountable to where they
are generating CO2.”

Are there international institutions aligning withgovernments on digital issues instead of organisations
setting their own standards?
Regulators tend to come in too late and too heavily.
They’re too slow, often, to monitor what’s happening.
So how do we protect people from being scammedby corrupt companies that abuse online trust in yourpersonal or company brand? How do we ensure that theregulators act quickly, but also the companies that hostthese negative reviews, the Trustpilot type companies,
the Google and Facebook type companies? When you
have big monopoly companies, they don’t like being
accountable. And that is a problem in a democracy.
David Rowan

THE IMPACT OF DIGITALISATION ON TRADE

5

Digitalisation and ecommerce?
Ecommerce is nothing new, with the first online sales taking
place in the 1990s. What is new, however, is the speed inwhich ecommerce is being adopted by consumers. During
the Covid-19 crisis, many governments enacted lockdowns
or stay-at-home orders requiring the temporary closure of
non-essential shops. Retailers with an established strong
online presence and access to a delivery network saw asurge in sales, as large numbers of people turned to online
shopping. Retail giants Amazon and Alibaba reported
astonishing growth. Amazon reported year-on-year
ecommerce revenue growth of 47% for the second quarterof 2020.⁴ Alibaba reported a 37% spike in sales in the final
quarter of 2020, compared to the same period in 2019.⁵
Smaller retailers and independents also saw their online
sales surge. A September 2020 survey by Shopify of 10,000
consumers across 11 countries found that 84% had shopped
online since the start of the pandemic.⁶ As Jean-Marc Noëlacknowledged of Trusted Shops: “there has been a massive
acceleration. We are seeing more than 1 million purchasetransactions through our system every day.”

can trust. And we do that with a combination of a trust mark,which is certification orientation for the consumer, but also
customer reviews, which are providing what we call thesocial proof, but also a great deal of information to improveas a company.”
In addition to the importance of digital trust, Jean-Marc
identified software and the way people work as two
key trends impacting ecommerce. He said: “Software
is hitting the world, breaking up the value chain and isreally disrupting retail trade. Everybody wants to go direct,
everybody wants data.” This can be seen with brands thatused to sell their goods to stores that are now selling directly
to consumers through their own websites, effectively
working in competition with their resellers. It can also beseen in the explosion of social media with platforms such as
Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and YouTube providing brands
the opportunity to engage directly with consumers, including
advertising and even direct sales (as with Instagram Shop).

The share of ecommerce - when you look at theaddressable retail sales - was something like 7%.
Now in 2020, it is 16%. In the UK, it’s as far as 26%.
Jean-Marc NoëlThe other side of the story is bleaker. Commenting on thesituation in the UK, the Chief Executive of the British Retail
Consortium said: “The forced closure of thousands of shops
during the first quarter of 2021 has exacerbated alreadydifficult conditions for the retail industry. We estimate there
are around 5,000 fewer stores since the start of the pandemic,
meaning 1 in 7 shops now lie empty.” ⁷
Retailers who have been slow to adopt a digital presence
have undoubtedly struggled. However, the pandemic has
only exacerbated wider structural issues impacting thehealth of retailers. The answer for many retailers lies online,
but the solution is far more complex than creating a website.
As Jean-Marc Noël noted in the webinar, the replacementof in-person interactions with digital interface leads to anincreased need for trust. He said: “When I started Trusted
Shops back in 2000, we had a vision for a digital world we

4 http://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/blog/amazon-ecommerce-sales-soar-amid-covid19
5 http://www.retail-week.com/tech/alibaba-sales-surge-amid-chinas-rapid-covid-19-recovery/7036717.article?authent=1

6

6 http://cdn.shopify.com/static/future-of-commerce/Shopify%20Future%20of%20Commerce%202021.pdf
7 http://brc.org.uk/news/corporate-affairs/empty-shop-fronts-continue-to-soar

THE IMPACT OF DIGITALISATION ON TRADECustomer satisfaction
and trust
One of the greatest challenges businesses face when engaging
in trade via digital platforms is the issue of trust. For JeanMarc Noël, a good place to start is to try and understand whattrust is and why it is important. He described it as a “lubricant”
to help smooth interactions in social and economic lives.
He said: “Imagine a world, when you have no trust. Thatwould be probably impossible, that would probably also
prevent innovation.” He asked the audience to think about
their own approach to online trust and pointed out that manyof us read online reviews before buying something or making
business decisions. He said: “You go on the internet and you
are currently ready to trust a stranger more than a brandspending millions for advertising.” He described this step
– from brand-controlled communications to user reviews –as a move from centralised to decentralised trust.
Institutional trust is failing
Jean-Marc added: “Today 90% of people will search for reviews
to make a decision. Maybe you want to change job? You will
check that company and what the employees are saying.”
He described this as a kind of perfect storm where
institutional trust is failing and cautioned the audience to stay
up to date with digital developments that have the power todamage brand reputations. As an example of what is currently
possible he encouraged the audience to look at a website
called thispersondoesnotexist.com. This uses an artificial
intelligence algorithm called generative adversarial network

If you have a transparent system, where
you’re clear about how the data is collected,
stored, and used, you have a lot moretrust than you do in the old world where
there were faceless organisations that
seemed to take liberties with your data.
David Rowan(GAN) to create hyper-realistic images of fake people. Theylook like real photographs, except they’re pictures createdby AI. Philip Wang says he developed the site to show “howmuch people are in the dark about AI and its potential.” ⁸Power has swung from the brand to the consumer
In addition to his cautionary note, Jean-Marc acknowledgedthat trust is a two-way relationship and that although thepower has swung from the brand to the consumer, there
is a great deal businesses can do to build customer loyalty.
He said businesses need to understand in real time, “whatmy customers are thinking about my company, and how
do I connect experience data with operational data to makesomething meaningful?” He noted that businesses that
do not actively engage with their customers online risk
developing a “passive profile”, a profile that he says is almost
always negative. The reason for this is that consumers are
more likely to complain when standards have not been met,
than they are to praise when standards have been.

7

8 http://www.inverse.com/article/53414-this-person-does-not-exist-creator-interview

THE IMPACT OF DIGITALISATION ON TRADEWhy buy when you can rent the latest model?
Everything as a Service
A significant technological development currently
impacting businesses and consumers throughout the worldis the growth of the cloud and the development of thecloud based ‘as a Service’ market. As Frédéric Wittemans
acknowledged in the webinar: “We are really seeing a
massive growth in cloud solutions. There’s huge demandfor cloud platforms. So we are really seeing what I would
call a dematerialisation of the way business is happening,or you can call it Everything as a Service. So you go from
Hardware as a Service, Software as a Service and thisobviously has a big impact on the way the supply chainsare being organised.”
The global Everything as a Service market, also called
Anything-as-a-Service (XaaS) is gaining momentum, with2020 growth estimates at about 38.22%.⁹ In essence XaaS
and the associated services, Infrastructure as a Service(IaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS) and Platform as aService are cloud based rental models. Many of us areusing these every day already in the form of entertainment
streaming services such as Netflix and Spotify. By renting
computing power from the massive data centres, businesses
adopting the SaaS model no longer have to house servers

8

on site and in addition to storing data in the cloud can lease
the latest versions of software instead of buying licensing
agreements outright. Exploiting the monitoring powerof the IoT many manufacturers are also able to leverage
the XaaS model. For example, “Rolls-Royce” has been renting
jet engines to airlines and then using data from networksof IoT sensors to provide proactive maintenance to help
their customers cut costs and boost operational efficiency.10
Challenges around XaaS and IoT
For many businesses, the XaaS model has been
instrumental in supporting the increased need to workfrom home that we have seen since the outset of thepandemic. There are downsides to this explosion in theneed for powerful computing, however. As Frédéric noted,
there is now a worldwide shortage of the semiconductors
required for much of this technology. He added: “One of the
big challenges with IoT is the data centre sitting behind it.
You need to find the right partners and the right security
to have access to those data in the right capacity at thesame time. And, this will have to be answered in termsof rights, the rights of security solutions around any kindof electronic device.” He cautioned that these markets
are changing rapidly, “but there is also a lot of hype”.

9 http://www.ingrammicrocloud.com/se/en/solutions-i-need-xaas
10 http://forbes.com/sites/insights-intelai/2018/09/21/the-big-promise-of-everything-as-a-service-ongoing-revenue-smarter-services/?sh=80e3b337d7d0

THE IMPACT OF DIGITALISATION ON TRADEOur pre-event questions
We asked 3 questions in advance.

Audience Q&A
How do we avoid too muchinvestment or the wrong type ofinvestment in technology?
There are specialists in the world who
can help you with that. And Ingram
Micro is one of those companies
actually channelling the IoT solutions.
We have our specialists internally andalso development labs in California,
helping us in understanding, which
are the right trends and where you
should be. So as a company, we aretrying to find which are the rightsolutions for our customers and for
our industry, and how we can help
them.
Frédéric Wittemans

We wanted to take a quick snapshot of how businesses
around the world are adopting new technology and what
they feel about digital transformation, so we asked our
webinar attendees the following three questions.

SINCE THE OUTSET OF THE PANDEMIC, TO WHAT DEGREE
HAS YOUR COMPANY ADOPTED DIGITALISATION TO
CHANGE YOUR SALES AND DISTRIBUTION MODELS?

41%
A LOT

48%

9%

A BIT

NOT
NOT
MUCH AT ALL

2%

DO YOU LARGELY SEE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION AS
AN OPPORTUNITY OR A THREAT FOR YOUR BUSINESS?

82%

11%

7%

OPPORTUNITY

NOT
SURE

THREATIS YOUR BUSINESS CURRENTLY USINGANY OF THESE INNOVATIONS?

50%
MACHINE LEARNING / ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

We are seeing adematerialisation of theway business is happening:
everything is called a service
today. Hardware as a service,software as a service andthis has a big impact on
the way the supply chainsare being organised.
Frédéric Wittemans

50%
CLOUD COMPUTING / SAAS

38%ROBOTICS / AUTOMATION / MACHINE WORKFORCE

27%
INTERNET OF THINGS23%
OTHER PLEASE INSERT: BIG DATA / VIDEO CONFERENCING-MEETINGS / API’S

12%
BLOCKCHAIN

4%3D PRINTING

0%9

CRYPTOCURRENCIESTHE IMPACT OF DIGITALISATION ON TRADEDespite digital, the aspect of the businessthat should not be forgotten, is the person
to person discussions through Teamsor Zoom or whatever you want to use
has become increasingly important.
Frédéric Wittemans

Human interaction: is it over?
One thing that has happened over the past year is, although
we might be more connected digitally, we’ve never beenless connected to other humans in the real world. Manyof us have had to work from home and businesses are
just beginning to work out whether they will adopt postpandemic hybrid models of office working and homeworking. We asked the panel how businesses have copedwith the absence of human interaction and how that will
impact things like training or recruitment moving forward.

10

Customer contact is important
Frédéric Wittemans noted that the restrictions onhuman contact did not just affect colleague-to-colleague
relationships, but also disrupted normal patterns ofcustomer contact. He said: “It is important as a businessto understand who you’re working with. When we couldn’t
go out visiting customers, we had to find other ways.
I can say definitely for my credit teams that we never had
as much contact with our customers as we ever did before.
THE IMPACT OF DIGITALISATION ON TRADE

Audience Poll #2
DOES DIGITALISATION CHANGE THE WAY YOU BUILD
TRUST AND LOYALTY WITH CUSTOMERS?

22% 57%IT’S A STRONGENABLER FOR
CUSTOMERSERVICE SO
TRUST ANDLOYALTY IS NO
ISSUE FOR US

IT WILL CHANGE
HOW WE INTERACTWITH CUSTOMERSAND WE DON’T
KNOW IF LOYALTYAND TRUST WILL
BE IMPACTED YET

21%
IT WILL CHALLENGEOUR VALUE PROPOSITION
AND THERE’S A RISKTHAT WE’LL BECOME
A COMMODITY AND OURSERVICE WILL NOT BE A
DIFFERENTIATOR ANYMORE

How is Atradius adjusting
to trends in digitalisation?

Audience Q&A
Is GDPR a help or a hindrance todigitalisation and trade?
GDPR is helpful with the adoption ofdata because there is a growing needfrom users and customers to knowwhat people are doing with their data.
GDPR says you need to be transparent
about what you’re doing with thedata. But software is also helping
companies implement GDPR policies
and to do it in the proper way.
Jean-Marc NoëlYes, it might be digital, but the person-to-person
discussions through Teams or Zoom or whatever you
want to use has become increasingly important.”
Frédéric also explained that even if sales were low
it was important to keep relationships going andto work out how best to support customers inchallenging situations. He said: “it was a very
important time for us to stay in touch with ourcustomers to understand how we could help themin developing their ecommerce solutions, or how
we could help them in delivering products for them.”
Frédéric added that communication and data isimportant because “the customers of our customers
might have been in trouble. So we need to understandthat. So big data usage has become suddenly so much
more important internally and externally, to guideour internal but also our external colleagues, throughthe change that we’re seeing today.”

Atradius is not far from its 100th birthday. But perhaps
unlike human nonagenarians who tend to be late adoptersof technology, the company’s approach to technology has
maintained pace with progress. As Dirk Hagener explained:“We have invested in this technology, we use web crawling
and text mining. Managing admin is absolutely the
focus at the moment, for efficiency and also how we work
together with companies and with our partners.”

The data which we have in a momentavailable can be better used, can besmarter used, but I still believe thatthe expertise of people, the relationshipof people in such a business is still key.
Dirk Hagener

However Dirk was also clear in pointing out that thesecutting edge tools are just that, tools. They are useful forgiving Atradius underwriters information at their fingertips
and help them to work in smarter, more efficient ways.
However, when it comes to value creation and decisionmaking the underwriters are irreplaceable. “People areabsolutely key for building trust in our proposition”, he said.
Looking to the future and noting areas where technology
could support further efficiencies, Dirk said that it would be“very valuable to have invoice information in our systems,
the system of a collector, the system of an informationcompany.” Live details on the status of an invoice, secured
and shared in a distributed ledger between the supplier,their customer, the credit insurer, broker and any otherrelevant party could bring greater transparency andefficiency to every part of trade credit, payments and debt
collection process.
Looking at the wider receivables management market
Dirk said: “We don’t see a big new landscaping of new
players. It is still relatively clear that the main companies
are driving the change in this area. But what also is clear
is that we need to keep the pace with the developmentof platforms and ecosystems”. He concluded: “We’retrying to transform ourselves and work with them,instead of waiting or risking being completely overtaken.”
THE IMPACT OF DIGITALISATION ON TRADE

11

Technology and data
One of the most important tools when conducting any
sort of effective credit management is data. Informationthat shows a business, sector, or market is experiencing
difficulties that could result in payment defaults isinvaluable when it comes to assessing risk and taking
decisions on whether to offer credit and, if credit is to be
granted, on what terms.
Much of the explosion of digitalisation in recent years has
resulted in the creation of a massive amount of new data.
From IoT connected machines, to millions of online reviews,
to blog posts, reports, the online publication of financial
statements and annual reports. However, digital innovation
has also resulted in tools to help collect, collate, process
and analyse this data. From text mining and web crawlingto Big Data and machine learning, a risk analyst can now
access a volume of data that would have taken weeks tocompile just a few years ago. Today the analyst can gather
it before he or she has even brewed their morning coffee.
Dirk Hagener, Atradius Director of Strategy and Corporate
Development, referred to this in the webinar. He said:“Data is now a kind of commodity and is much moreavailable. A lot of tools are out there.” However a bigger
volume of data does not equate with ‘better’. In addition
to questions over the quality of this large volume of data,

12
THE IMPACT OF DIGITALISATION ON TRADE

Audience Q&A
Shouldn’t we first think about optimising our processes
before heading to an evolved digitalisation?
I would say that, yes, from my side, because I think
there is still a lot of homework to do. But to create value
in that I think we need to bring in the expertise wehave and not only digitalisation. Digitalisation will
help us very much in the efficiency side at this stage.
And then to create value, we need to have our people
working on it, creating propositions that are attractivein the receivables management market.
Dirk Hagener

It is very much the question how data
can be transformed from one system
to the other, especially the receivables
management is quite complex.
Dirk HagenerDirk asked us to also consider how data is moved fromone system to another and how vulnerable that is to being
tampered with. The security provided by technology suchas blockchain and distributed ledger are undoubtedly
important in this arena.
Touching on an earlier discussion during the webinar, Dirk
returned to the question of trust. He asked: “how much we cantrust, for example, social media? We have technologies, like
web crawling or machine learning and text mining, whichhelps us there but it is a question of how much weight we cangive to this information.” Ultimately, these are questions thatcan only be answered by the risk analyst or underwriter. As
Dirk put it: “I believe that social capital, the expertise of people
and the relationships between people in business, are still key.”

Audience Poll #3
HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT POTENTIAL CHANGES TO
YOUR OWN ROLE AS A RESULT OF DIGITALISATION?

22% 44%
PREPAREDEXCITED

31% 2%UNCERTAINANXIOUSGlossary
AI – Artificial Intelligence
AI uses algorithms to take information from sensors, digital
data, or other inputs including real time data to complete
analysis or decision-based actions. AI is currently used in
medical diagnosis, search engines, voice recognition andautonomous vehicles.
Big Data
Large volumes of information, including complex data sets,that can include both structured and unstructured material ofvariable quality, that may be gathered at great speeds.
Blockchain
A decentralised list of records (called blocks) that have digitaltimestamps and are chained together in chronological order.
This linking means that if one piece of information is changed
at a later date – or tampered with – it impacts on and can beseen by all of the other links (users) in the chain.
Cloud platforms
Uses a network of remote servers hosted on the internet tostore, manage, and process data, rather than a local server or apersonal computer. The servers are usually located in dedicateddata centres and enable ‘as a service’ or XaaS models.
Distributed ledger
Databases that are shared and synchronised across a networkof people, usually across different locations.

IoT - Internet of Things
Smart devices that are connected to the internet and canbe connected to each other. From fridges, to phones and evensensors on production lines, the IoT encompasses billions ofdevices.
Machine learning
Machine learning is a type of AI where algorithms are used
to help a computer build up a cumulative data set in order to
identify patterns and make decisions with minimal humanintervention.
RPA - Robotic Process Automation
Software technology to automate computer-based actions.
For example an RPA system might identify emails containing
invoices, extract the data and process this in a bookkeeping
system.
Text mining
The process of deriving high-quality information from text.
This may involve accessing insights, patterns and trends ineven large volumes of unstructured data.
Web crawlingSometimes called a spider or spiderbot, this search engine
program systematically browses the World Wide Web andindexes content.
THE IMPACT OF DIGITALISATION ON TRADE

13

If you’ve found this whitepaper useful, why not visit our
website www.atradius.com, where you’ll find many more
Atradius publications focusing on the global economy,
including country reports, industry analysis, advice on
credit management and essays on current business issues.
This paper captures the views of the webcast’s virtual panel
and is not necessarily a reflection of the views of Atradius.
Visit the Atradius YouTube channel to access a summary
version of the webinar.

COVID-19 CHANGED
1 HOW
GLOBAL TRADE FOREVER
TRADE RELATIONSHIPS & TARIFFS
2 HOW
ARE AFFECTING TRADE WORLDWIDE

3 DIGITALISATION ON TRADE
THE IMPACT OF

DE-GLOBALISATION – A NEW WAY

4 TO TRADE BUT WILL IT STICK?

Andreas Tesch
Chief Market Officer Atradius
Daisy McAndrew
Moderator / Journalist
David Rowan
Founding editor of WIRED’s UK edition
and investor in technology start-ups
Jean-Marc NoëlFounder and Managing
Director of Trusted Shops
Frédéric Wittemans
Executive Director International Credit
at Ingram Micro
Dirk Hagener
Director Strategy &Corporate Development AtradiusConnect with
Atradius on social media
youtube.com/user/atradiusgrouplinkedin.com/company/atradius
twitter.com/atradius

Copyright © Atradius N.V. 2021
Disclaimer: This report is provided for information purposes only and is not intended as investment advice,legal advice or as a recommendation as to particular transactions, investments or strategies to any reader.
Readers must make their own independent decisions, commercial or otherwise, regarding the information
provided. While we have made every attempt to ensure that the information contained in this report has
been obtained from reliable sources, Atradius is not responsible for any errors or omissions, or for the results
obtained from the use of this information. All information in this report is provided ’as is’, with no guaranteeof completeness, accuracy, and timeliness or of the results obtained from its use, and without warrantyof any kind, express or implied. In no event will Atradius, its related partnerships or corporations, or thepartners, agents or employees thereof, be liable to you or anyone else for any decision made or action taken
in reliance on the information in this report or for any consequential, special or similar damages, evenif advised of the possibility of such damages. Sources include: Event panellists and Atradius economists.

Atradius
David Ricardostraat 1 · 1066 JS Amsterdam
P.O. box 8982 · 1006 JD Amsterdam
The Netherlands
Phone: +31 (0)20 - 553 91 11
info@atradius.com
www.atradius.com