Global Trade Compliance

The harmonization of advance electronic cargo information requirements on all inbound, outbound and transit shipments is critical to ensuring the secure movement of goods worldwide. The disparity between the mandates outlined by countries around the world and the infrastructure capabilities of global supply chain stakeholders make the exchange of timely and accurate information on a global basis extremely challenging.

Descartes is a worldwide leading provider of solutions for global trade compliance. Descartes addresses complex business needs and the latest customs regulations. Descartes’ approach to global trade compliance consolidates the company’s global expertise in this market and provides trading partners with transparency in the filing process. Through a federated platform and Global Logistics Network (GLN), supply chain partners can integrate operational data flow through their network anywhere in the world, regardless of location or region.

Descartes’ cost-efficient and flexible solution addresses these issues and prepares trading partners to meet global trade compliance mandates published today, and anticipates future compliance requirements.

With Descartes, trading partners can achieve:

• Cargo Security Compliance - Global import and export cargo security is in place to improve the sharing of information gathered by the trade community with the government bodies around the world. With this information government systems can screen cargo and parties for what they perceive to be at risk and take appropriate actions by refusing the goods or planning for inspection prior to discharging them within their countries.
• Customs Declarations Compliance - Often touted as a primary source of government revenue, the duties and taxes associated with the importing of goods is a critical element of the supply chain compliance responsibility. While a shared role between the purchasing company, supplier, broker and government- customs declarations involve the highest degree of transparency over exactly the nature of the commodity entering the country, its value and where it was made.
• Importer/Exporter Trade Compliance - The role of the importer has, in the last decade, been enhanced and enforced with respect to cargo security and duty declarations respectively. The importance has also been raised on the nature and quality of the information passed either directly or indirectly to government authorities.

Descartes Global Trade Compliance features
and benefits include:

• A flexible, collaborative data collection environment for multiple trading partners;
• Standard structured messaging and the ability to accept complete and incomplete data from operational applications using a variety of business documents;
• A business rule engine to determine which filings are required, and where a single transmission can be reused for multiple filing requirements;
• A rules-based engine to determine the completeness of filings on receipt;
• Integrated event management to alert parties of impending timelines;
• A centralized data store for all filings and compliance agency responses to enable complete audit and reporting capabilities;
• Global user-defined dashboard to support operational exception management;
• Global filing reporting functionality including archived filing documents, status messaging, and complete transaction audit;
• Role-based access control to ensure data integrity and security; and,
• Unified user interface to repair or augment data centrally on screen or through backwards integrated fixes with the users ERP system.