Micro businesses and SMEs are hugely underserviced when it comes to business support, especially technical international trade support. Most government funded programmes although free are hugely generic and lack the operational, hand holding support that fosters confidence and self-sufficiency within these businesses that in turn empowers them to realise their exporting potential and growth. Conversely, bespoke consulting can be highly detailed in nature, but is often outside the budgets of most small companies.

GTD is changing the face of small business support in international trade; leveraging expertise, knowledge and experience typically only accessible as part of large scale consultancy engagements and making it available to small businesses. The GTD Platform is a hugely important part of this shift.

We are already seeing an increase in paperless trade as countries transition from paper-based documentation to electronic formats, streamlining customs and reducing costs. Legal frameworks are also emerging to support electronic exchange of trade documents between nations, enhancing interoperability. Indeed, the new Digital Trade Facilitation Index (TDI) metric tracks how well countries implement digital trade measures, offering benchmarks for progress.

As Jamie Clifton, GTD Technical Director and GTD Platform Architect says: “Our mantra with the platform is ‘we understand customs and regulation, so you don’t have to’; our aim being to allow clients to describe their products and world in a way that makes sense to them, the platform takes that information and determines which customs procedures and regulations apply and what the client needs to do to ensure compliance. The reality is that most customs processes and regulation are composed of the same fundamental steps; understanding these is helping us transform customs and regulatory compliance for our clients in a super cost effective way and that is something that the traditional consultancy-based approach cannot do.”