If you would like to export your products overseas but are intimidated by the complex maze of compliance and operational issues involved doing that, you’re not alone. What might help, writes Kevin Casey for Information Week, is an interesting application of the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model: Automated, pay-as-you-go export management and compliance delivered online.
As an example, Casey points to Management Dynamics, a global trade and supply chain management company, which just released version 1.2 of its Export On-Demand tool, a modular SaaS platform that can automate and manage key aspects of the global trade game. Those include product classification, restricted-party compliance, and the reams of paperwork exporting generates.
Casey lays out some of the difficulties involved in exporting:
“…the U.S. government, for one, groups products into a variety of categories, and the rules, tariffs, and licensing that applies to each varies. Restricted-party compliance deals with where you plan to sell: Certain countries, such as Iran or Cuba, are embargoed; likewise, the U.S. and other governments prohibit sales to terrorist groups, known criminals, and otherpersona non grata…[and] keeping up with these lists manually is extremely difficult for SMBs…Last, the paperwork: As if there wasn’t enough on your desk already, exporting generates a tremendous amount of it, much of which needs to be sent to customers or filed with government agencies.”
Managment Dynamics’ Export On-Demand program automates that process, although the company says SMBs still need an “empowered official” in-house responsible for compliance issues, though that could be the international sales manager or equivalent. Management Dynamics also opens its platform to third parties and says it’s common for small exporters to outsource their operations to a freight forwarder or other qualified vendor that can integrate Export On-Demand with its systems.
Read more at Information Week.
