Not all apps are created equal

Choose Wisely...

 “If I already know someone, why would I use a platform to communicate with them?”

We hear this from time to time – Dealboard members browsing the thousands of metric tons available any given day on Dealboard, and finding seafood offered by someone they know. Their temptation is to use their usual ways of communicating with that party – email or WhatsApp.

Why not?

Here’s why not:

Email isn’t safe

Email is a great way to communicate, but it takes a lot of work to make it really secure for sensitive communications such as negotiating large transactions.

And, even with the best security measures in place, things slip by – have you heard about this recent and high profile example of phishing in the seafood industry? https://www.farodevigo.es/economia/2023/02/28/estafar-ceo-nueva-pescanova-anunciandole-83867748.html

The CEO in the article is clearly taking it in stride, and even having a bit of a laugh about the situation. But this is only funny until someone falls for it, and it’s only funny until it happens to you.

What sizable seafood company hasn't been spoofed in the past year by an email communication that isn’t really coming from who it is supposedly from? Things worse than this happen all the time.

Tightening your email security drives up your IT costs significantly, and doesn’t mean something won’t happen to you. And if you fall for it, the economic damage to your company could be irreparable.

WhatsApp isn’t much better

WhatsApp is great for instant communication, but you can never be sure if the person you’re working with is still a representative of the company you want to deal with.

People change jobs, and when they do they often take their WhatsApp numbers with them. Suppose they move over to a competitor of yours… are you really ready to share your prices, inventory and other key information with your competition?

Then what?

Even if your email or WhatsApp conversations are not compromised, and you successfully negotiate a transaction, what follows are a lot of manual steps you need to do to communicate the deal terms to the rest of your team to follow up with shipping and payment. That means you are re-typing a lot of information rather than hunting your next deal, or you and your teams are stuck chasing down misunderstandings with the other party.

What's needed is a safe room, a zone where seafood parties can get their work done quickly, efficiently, and with reduced risk... so that they can move on to the next deal and expand their business.

That's why not. 

How to give all your business to your competitor

How many of you clicked that? How many of you knew not to click it?

The link above is harmless, but the next email you receive might not be. In the seafood industry we do a lot of fishing, but how much do we worry about phishing?

Phishing is the practice of sending emails which look real for the express purpose of stealing private information. Phishing emails might lure the recipient into providing things like account number or passwords, or they might trick the recipient into clicking on a file attachment which unleashes malicious code.

When your business revolves around communicating or responding to offers via email, your business is at risk for phishing. Think about it....

Do you feel like clicking on the file attachment in your next offer email? What if it launched a virus which stole all of your email contacts - your trading partners - and sent them to your competitor?

It pays to spot phishing. But here's the challenge -

This may not be a phishing email...

...and this may be a phishing email:

Can you spot the difference?

Neither can we.

The only path to phishless fish is to manage your seafood trading in a private, safe and secure platform... and not in your emails.

News: Dealboard and Euler Hermes announce partnership to bring confidence to wholesale seafood transactions

Integration enables seafood producers, processors, wholesalers, exporters and brokers to manage credit insurance coverage while negotiating transactions

Dealboard, the global electronic seafood market, and Euler Hermes, the world's largest trade credit insurance company, announce a partnership to bring certainty, efficiency and ease to the process of buying and selling wholesale seafood. Trade credit insurance provided by Euler Hermes may now be easily accessed and managed through Dealboard’s e-commerce platform.

“Providing a fast and easy means to access trade credit insurance gives seafood suppliers assurance that they will get paid for goods they sell,” said Steve Engdahl, director, Dealboard. “Our customers want a simple user experience. Our integration with Euler Hermes delivers Dealboard customers a clean, simple and very efficient way to negotiate and transact with confidence.”

“Euler Hermes saw the opportunity to provide an additional level of protection and certainty to our policyholders transacting on the Dealboard platform,” said Aaron Lindstrom, regional head of partnerships, Euler Hermes North America. “Our integration with Dealboard eliminates extra manual steps or the need to pivot between multiple systems in order to finalize and insure seafood deals.”

Seafood producers, processors, wholesalers, exporters and brokers need to assess the creditworthiness of potential buyers. Now they may confirm or establish Euler Hermes trade credit insurance coverage for their trading parties as they negotiate transactions within Dealboard. Dealboard provides the tools and marketplace for finalizing transactions, insurance is offered by Euler Hermes, and Dealboard makes use of Euler Hermes APIs to bring credit insurance inquiries to the seller’s fingertips.

 

About Dealboard

Dealboard is the global electronic seafood market, a SaaS software platform for producers, processors, wholesalers, exporters and brokers of seafood. Dealboard brings transparency, traceability and efficiency to global food supply chains through communities of trust, making global electronic trading affordable, easy and seamless. Dealboard solutions undo fragmentation, eliminate factors which undermine trust, and level the playing field for vendors of all sizes and regions.

For more information, please visit www.dealboard.biz

 

About Euler Hermes

Euler Hermes is the global leader in trade credit insurance and a recognized specialist in the areas of surety, collections, structured trade credit and political risk. Headquartered in Paris, Euler Hermes is present in more than 50 countries with 5,800 employees. In 2020, Euler Hermes global business transactions represented 824 billion Euro in exposure. Euler Hermes is a full member of Allianz Group.

For more information, please visit www.eulerhermes.us

 

The Fox, The Henhouse and the Fish (Why independence matters in your e-commerce platform)

One of the reasons maintaining trusted relationships is so important to the seafood industry is the many disreputable parties who find a way into the seafood supply chain, looking for ways to game the system. Whether it’s IUU fishing, mislabeling, failure to deliver product or failure to pay, these actors work to their advantage and to the detriment of other industry participants. But the chances to be gamed don’t stop at these obvious factors.

There are so many steps in the seafood supply chain, that it’s difficult to preserve margin at each step in the process. Anything that disrupts seller-buyer dynamics is a threat. We all use our relationships and history to know who our trusted buyers and sellers are, versus others who might step in ahead or behind us in the supply chain but not add value. But are there ways a predatory party could lurk in and around your transaction process, undetected?

An important consideration here becomes the independence of your e-commerce platform. When choosing a platform and marketplace for negotiating wholesale seafood transactions, it’s critical to look beyond what the platform offers and who the trading counterparties are, to also understand who is backing the platform itself. Is the platform backed by a broker or seafood company you compete with or transact with? If so, think about the kind of information about your business that company could have access to – who you do business with, what you have available to buy or sell, the prices you’re getting, and more.

Marketplace platforms which aren’t independent are a perfect case of the fox guarding the henhouse… or in this case, guarding your fish.

For the record – Dealboard is an electronic seafood marketplace independent of any broker or competing seafood companies. We do not take a position in any transaction.

As a stand-alone company not affiliated with any broker or competing seafood company, using Dealboard is a way to preserve your business model, your proprietary information, your trusted relationships and your margin.

CONXEMAR Round-up Part 3: Who Do You Trust, and How?

Team Dealboard recently attended CONXEMAR, the International Fair of Frozen Seafood organized by the Spanish Association of Wholesalers, Importers, Processors and Exporters of Fisheries and Aquaculture Products. While there, we engaged in 120 conversations with representatives from over 100 companies in the seafood industry. We share our observations about the CONXEMAR event, the current state of the seafood industry, and the impact of COVID in this multi-part series.

Relationships matter. We do business with those who we’ve successfully done business with before. We build trust based on observing each other’s patterns of behavior. And if we’ve had an issue or dispute, we make note of those who strive to do right by others and honor “the spirit of the agreement” rather than those who ruthlessly work their advantage on the basis of a technicality. These concepts aren’t just for the seafood industry, they apply to life as a whole.

But, when it comes to relationships, the seafood industry has a scalability problem. We know that at the fringes of this industry, there are plenty of sketchy operations. Each of us every day faces decisions about whether to permit smaller companies to make big purchases, and from time to time every one of us finds ourselves in a disagreement over something which had previously been agreed. It’s no wonder many seafood buyer/seller relationships, the most successful ones, have been built and strengthened over generations.

But now, fisheries in some locations are threatened by climate change, forcing us to seek new suppliers in other regions. And, despite the generations-long history of many seafood trading relationships, the pandemic introduced unprecedented supply chain volatility and consumer demand uncertainty, leading many parties to exit the industry or seek shelter under bankruptcy proceedings.

All of this puts pressure on relationships, and forces all of us to seek new ones. Lack of trust becomes a huge barrier to growing your network. This was a frequent topic in our conversations at CONXEMAR. Any time a new party wants to purchase goods and services, developing trust over a generation is too long to wait for the necessary trust to develop.

There are ways to mitigate this, of course – word of mouth referrals, testing new parties through small transactions first, or obtaining credit insurance, for example. But each of these takes time, or gets expensive.

How do you build trust? Is your process to build trust a barrier or an enabler for your business growth?