Department for Business and Trade (DBT): Digital tools and practices to assist UK businesses with international trade

Navigator Insight’s latest research commissioned by the Department for Business and Trade (DBT) examines how UK businesses can use digital tools and practices to assist international trade, explores how they reach decisions on which options to adopt, and investigates the factors that could be limiting wider adoption. 

Our research also explores how different types of trade agreements can influence behavioural drivers such as businesses that already use digital tools and practices but rarely recognise that agreements support them; businesses that have observed some benefits or efficiency improvements but don’t link them to agreement; businesses where customers and demand drive decisions but agreements reassure all parties that markets are ‘safe’; and businesses that notice when the support of agreements is absent but not when it is present.

This research is aimed at helping the Government improve how it supports businesses to trade services digitally and to inform its approach to trade agreements and digital provisions, and is part of the UK’s Digital Trade Corridors (DTC) programme which includes pilot reporting and trade digitalisation between the UK and other countries.

Further DBT research on the awareness and use of electronic trade documents (ETDs) by UK-based SME exporters and intermediaries and how the Government and industry can support their adoption has also been completed, and you can discover more about these including advice and guidance by visiting business.gov.uk. The full report can be viewed on the Government website using the link below: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/unlocking-digital-trade-behavioural-insights-into-services-trade Image credit: Unsplash/Jakub Zerdzicki