During the course of the last two decades a great deal of disruption has taken place in the field of supply chain management. This growth has fostered a diversity of players that ranges from a lone fashion designer in Milan that imports from Asia and sells on Amazon, to well entrenched manufacturers that import and export on every continent.
For all of this variety, companies engaged in global business share several common objectives — to increase sales; reduce landed costs; compress cumulative lead times; and optimize inventory.
As companies engage in a number of activities to achieve the above goals, a common theme that has emerged in the 21st century is that of “Supply Chain Integration”. This is as much a physical-world undertaking as a digital transformation — integration involves the linking of tasks, activities and processes in ways that create value for both internal and external customers.
Great strides have been made in the integration of supply chains, however, there is one mission-critical discipline that’s been neglected — Trade Compliance. Often viewed as a “necessary evil”, adherence to trade regulations has for the most part, remained in a silo. Essential to both import and export models, the ability to link compliance with other operational areas represents an order-of-magnitude gain in trade facilitation, customer service, productivity and profitability.
To the above end, it is the position of this white paper that trade compliance is not only a source of competitive advantage as a stand-alone function; its alignment with other disciplines will enhance execution across the entire supply chain ecosystem. Based on the fundamental premise that a multi-functional, holistic approach to compliance is simply good business, the balance of this paper is dedicated to explaining precisely how that can be done.
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