You know your procurement process could be better. Your team knows it. Your suppliers probably know it too. But when you bring a proposal to the board, the first question you hear is: "What's the return?" And not in vague terms like 'efficiency' or 'supply chain visibility.' They want to see euros.
In this blog, Tonnis de Boer, CEO of Tradecloud One, explains how to build a business case that survives the boardroom. With real numbers from real companies.
The board thinks differently than you do
As a supply chain professional, you think in processes, delivery reliability, and response times. The board thinks in margins, risk reduction, and return on investment. That's not a lack of understanding, it's a different lens.
So you need to translate. Not: "We'll reduce manual processing time." But: "We'll save €55,000 a year in processing costs across 10,000 order lines."
Not: "We'll get better visibility into our suppliers." But: "We'll reduce the risk of production downtime that costs us €4,000 an hour."
Numbers the board actually understands
Let's get specific. I've written before about what manual order management truly costs. For an average company processing 10,000 order lines a year, the direct costs look like this:
Processing time: four minutes per order line adds up to 667 hours a year. At €50 per hour, that's €33,350. Error correction at a 10% error rate: 250 hours, another €12,500. Re-confirmations on 30% of orders: 200 hours, €10,000. Total direct costs: €55,850 per year.
And that's before factoring in indirect costs. Production losses from bad data. Rush orders triggered by missed changes. Missed discount opportunities from a lack of supplier analysis. When companies run the full numbers, total costs often come out two to three times higher.
What peers are showing
The board doesn't just want numbers, they want proof that it works. In comparable companies. In comparable situations.
At Quooker, automation freed up two FTEs worth of capacity. Not through redundancies, but by giving people more meaningful work. 140 of their 180 suppliers are now digitally connected. Planners manage by exception rather than by email.
At Moba, 85% of orders flow through fully automatically, resulting in 23% higher delivery reliability. At Intersafe, the time spent on operational tasks was cut in half. At Vandeputte, 338 suppliers are connected and 90% of orders are fully automated.
More than 60 procurement teams and 800 suppliers now work on the Tradecloud platform, from machinery manufacturers to wholesalers, from family businesses to multinationals. View all customer cases.
Implementation: not an IT odyssey
A common board concern: "How long before we're live?" The answer is more reassuring than you might expect.
Technical implementation takes two to four weeks. Functional implementation, including onboarding the first ten suppliers, takes another two to four weeks. Supplier onboarding is included in the subscription. Tradecloud provides materials, templates, and support throughout. Implementation is fixed price, no surprises down the line.
Quooker did this in the middle of their ERP migration, replacing their ERP, WMS, and CRM simultaneously. Michiel van Veen described it as open-heart surgery. I've written before about how they combined the ERP migration with supply chain digitization.
What could go wrong?
The board will ask, and rightly so. Three things to know upfront:
One: your master data needs to be clean. If your item files are a mess, you'll be automating that mess. Budget two to four weeks for data clean-up, depending on quality.
Two: not every supplier will make the switch immediately. Start with your top ten and let the results do the talking. At Vandeputte, 338 out of 438 suppliers have now made the transition, but it happened in phases.
Three: it requires attention from your key users. Not full-time, but genuinely engaged. Expect roughly half a day per week during implementation.
The board wants to know you've thought through the risks. Name them yourself before someone else does.
The conversation with the board
Structure your business case around three pillars:
One: direct cost savings. Calculate the hours your team currently spends on manual work and convert them into euros.
Two: risk reduction. What does an hour of production downtime cost? How many rush orders did you place last year? What did they cost on top of that?
Three: market evidence. Show that comparable companies have achieved measurable results. Boards make decisions faster when they see that peers have already taken the leap.
And above all: speak the board's language. No supply chain jargon. Euros, percentages, return on investment.
Want to pressure-test your business case for your specific situation? Schedule a conversation and we'll work through the numbers together. Or take a look at how comparable companies approached it first.
One tip: bring your CFO to that first conversation. That way, you're speaking the same language from the start.
Tonnis de Boer, CEO Tradecloud One
