Global Trade Flows

Regarding the flow of goods, it is important to manage the processes around areas such as the original order and contract, product information, trade compliance, shipment tracking, and landed costs. For example

* Order management requires the ability to track the business terms of the order correctly. As an order progresses, it is essential to reconcile all shipment activities against the order to ensure that the process is smooth from a transactional and security perspective.

* Trade compliance requires the ability to manage import and export compliance processes. The proper management of these processes includes screening trading partners against governmental prohibition lists, determining that commodities can be shipped to the country of destination, managing outsourced service provider activity, such as a broker and auditing compliance activities, to ensure the correct flow of information and the accurate payment of taxes, duty, and fees.

* Product information must manage the flow of goods related information relevant to the physical goods. For example, Harmonized Tariff Schedule (HTS) or the Export Control Classification Number (ECCN) numbers to assist trade compliance, weights for shipment booking, and documents for tracking.

* Shipment tracking has to provide visibility for the location of the goods throughout the life of the trade, including entry and exit from ports, and title exchange through to proof of delivery, with status on when the goods reach the final destination.

As for the flow of funds, it is important to manage the way invoices are handled, international payments are made, and how these payments are reconciled. For example

* Reconciliation should handle global trade requirements for n-dimensional matching to sort through the vast amount of information required to settle global transactions. Matching must be managed across trading documents, highlighting exceptions at the line-item level.

* Invoice management has to manage commercial and customs invoice creation and presentation, and manage outstanding invoices.

* Letter of credit (LC) management has to manage the flow of letters of credit from their creation through to their final presentment. The process needs to synchronize between LC data and critical supporting documents, including bill of lading (BOL), invoice, and packing list.

* Dispute management has to flag issues and manage the resolution flows between multiple trading partners

* Trade financing requires functions factoring trade receivables based on multiple trade characteristics such as shipping lane, currency, buyer supplier rating, or trade credit.

With regard to the flow of information, it is critical to track and manage information anomalies, documentation, and interaction with trading partners to create secure audit trails and settle transactions. For example

* Pro-active information alerting provides the ability to act on exceptions and information anomalies between trading partners and service providers

* Document creation and management is needed to ensure that documents are both accurate and compliant with business agreements and regulations to ensure the swift exchange of title of goods and payment

* Trading partner integration has to manage the flow of information with all trading partners

* Audit trails are required to provide clear document appraisals for all documentation, processes, and communication with partner interactions.

To recap, across the three major flows, user companies need to deploy tools that support the automation of standard workflow procedures, synchronize, and reconcile the exchange of data, automate document generation, provide for exception management, and provide for detailed and flexible visibility into orders and shipments. This all must be done while complying with security, compliance and other regulatory requirements.