Portrait of Best-in-Class Global Trade Compliance

In an increasingly global marketplace for manufacturers, the role of trade compliance is taking on more prominence in separating the winners and the losers. In a recent study of 340 global importers and exporters, analyst firm Aberdeen Group found that a big problem with many companies is that, outside of the trade compliance department, most decision-makers within companies do not understand the risks of non-compliance with security regulations for international trade. The difference between companies identified by Aberdeen as "best-in-class" and "average" is significant: 9.2% of international orders have trade compliance errors in average companies, while that number is halved (4.6%) for best-in-class performers.

The accompanying PACE (pressures, actions, capabilities and enablers) chart illustrates how manufacturers can progress from identifying a problem to focusing on a solution, and as a result become best-in-class themselves.

Pressures

• Growing global operations

Actions

• Improve productivity of trade compliance department by streamlining processes
• Launch a company-wide initiative to improve trade compliance

Capabilities

• Ability to access information on trade regulation updates
• Trade compliance management centralized at enterprise level
• Mostly manual trade compliance practices
• Measure trade compliance performance at least monthly
• Online visibility into trade document status

Enablers

• Analytics tools for import/export transactions
• Trade compliance software for import/export

Source: Aberdeen Group

See Also

• Building a Better Supply Chain in Three Not-So-Easy Steps
• No Recession in the Supply Chain Arena
• Cross-Docking: By The Numbers
• Bookshelf: Best Practices in Lean Six Sigma Process Improvement: A Deeper Look
• Supply Chain Solutions