Manufacturers should automate trade compliance to streamline their global operations effectively. With the complexity and constantly changing nature of import and export regulations, automating trade compliance becomes essential to avoid fines and penalties. By utilizing automated systems, manufacturers can ensure they stay current with the latest trade restrictions and easily cross-check various parties against sanctioned lists. Manual compliance checking can be time-consuming and prone to errors, while automation significantly improves accuracy and effectiveness in following international trade laws. Embracing automation in trade compliance not only enhances a company's risk management but also facilitates smoother and more efficient international trade processes, promoting overall business growth and reputation.

What Are Consequences of Non-Compliance?

When shipping goods internationally, it is essential for companies to adhere to a variety of rules and regulations that vary depending on the origin and destination of their shipments. This includes ensuring compliance with OFAC regulations for transactions involving US dollars and adhering to laws set by the European Union regarding restricted or prohibited goods. Shippers must also have a thorough understanding of national and international trade compliance regulations and properly classify their goods to avoid potential fines from customs authorities. Compliance with these regulations is crucial for companies to maintain streamlined operations throughout the supply chain.

Failure to comply with trade regulations can lead to financial penalties, delays in deliveries, loss of goods, and disruptions in the supply chain. Continued violations may lead to the loss of export privileges, which can harm a company's reputation and customer loyalty. To reduce these risks, it is recommended that international shippers simplify their trade compliance procedures through automation, saving time and labor costs.

Why Is Trade Compliance Automation Crucial?

Automating trade compliance processes eliminates the need for guesswork by providing access to international HS codes, country-specific commodity codes, and current lists of denied parties. It also allows for automatic background checks on clients and business partners, identification of required licenses, and offers audit trails for compliance metrics and improvements. This efficient method saves time and reduces the need for manual research in ensuring compliance with trade regulations.

By using an automated trade compliance solution, shippers can effectively reduce risks and streamline time-consuming manual tasks. Let's further explore these benefits.

Enhanced Operational Efficiency

An intricate process such as conducting a restricted party screening or denied party list check, which could have taken hours to complete, can now be done efficiently through automation. Automated screening has a low margin of error, reducing the chances of facing fines and penalties. By combining historical data, current regulatory information, and customer and partner profiles, automated compliance tools create a thorough compliance workflow within a trade compliance solution.

Monitoring Vital Procedures

In order to achieve effective trade compliance, it is important to carefully track and document every process, workflow, and report. These records must be securely stored for future reference, creating what is known as the compliance audit trail. This audit trail is crucial in ensuring compliance with international regulations. Therefore, an automated solution should be able to compare the compliance audit trail with various international regulations and customs requirements.

Sanctions and Restricted Entities

Global trade compliance solutions help export teams ensure that goods are not sent to embargoed countries or restricted individuals. This is crucial due to the constantly changing international and government lists of denied parties, making manual checks challenging. Automated trade compliance solutions offer shippers access to current trade content data, allowing them to easily identify denied parties, controlled products, embargoes, and sanctioned countries.

Risk Mitigation

Automated trade compliance solutions provide the convenience of conducting compliance checks at various stages of a transaction, such as when establishing a customer relationship and before shipment. By incorporating automated trade compliance measures, organizations can effectively perform due diligence, reducing the risk of penalties, fines, and shipping errors. This results in enhanced internal operations, avoidance of violations, and increased customer satisfaction, ultimately positioning businesses for a competitive advantage.

How Does Nirmalya Suite Simplify Trade Compliance?

Nirmalya Suite is a comprehensive cloud-based platform that helps organizations streamline their business processes and unify their workforce, technology, and operations. It offers supply chain planning, advanced scheduling, and cohesive business processes to empower companies in gaining a competitive edge and ensuring sustained success. The suite covers core operations like human resources, CRM, sales, service, manufacturing, inventory, asset management, purchasing, and financials, along with insights, reporting, and analytics. It provides real-time data for capacity planning, making it faster and more accurate, and includes industry best-practices, compliance, extensibility, and AI capabilities to help manufacturers quickly go live, reap benefits, and maintain efficiency and agility.

Nirmalya Suite's Imports Management streamlines and carries out essential procedures and regulatory obligations related to customs clearance of imported goods. It promotes transparency and oversight, offering tailored resources to support international trade experts in crucial import operations. By guaranteeing adherence to trade regulations and streamlining processes, Import Management creates strategic benefits. With its workflow capabilities, it assists in managing the trade flow, proactively identifying data and documentation needs to prevent delays, expenses, and compliance risks in advance.

Nirmalya Suite's Imports Management offers access to the internationally recognized Harmonized Commodity Description and Coding System developed by the World Customs Organization. This also provides ongoing access to current country-specific tariffs, automatically updating the system with any changes. Users are alerted to any new HS codes added to the database and flagged for obsolete codes. This ensures that the user's database is always up to date with the latest tariff information.

Nirmalya Suite's Imports Management enables users to compare potential source countries for imports, identifying advantageous duty rates and eligibility for Duty Free entry under Free Trade Agreements. It also provides electronic advanced shipping notices for early visibility and automatically alerts users of any incomplete documentation or data. This proactive approach allows users to address any outstanding admissibility requirements promptly.

Nirmalya Suite's Imports Management automates the production of import documentation, ensuring that all documents are created accurately and in the correct format and language. This includes specialized customs invoices, PGA documents, special product forms, and FTA certificates. With this functionality, businesses can streamline their import processes and ensure compliance with regulations.

Nirmalya Suite's Imports Management offers an ISF template for importers and the option to create their own Customs Entry. This allows users to conduct an internal Pre-Entry audit of their data before submitting it to Customs, a best practice in the industry. Once the Entry is audited, users can choose to push it to their Customs Broker or become a self-filer and electronically file their Entry directly to Customs, reducing or eliminating Broker service fees and generating immediate ROI.

Nirmalya Suite's operational dashboard is designed to help with management by exception, giving a quick view of pending shipments so personnel can focus on any potential issues or outstanding requirements. The dashboard includes user-defined metrics and Key Performance Indices to provide managers with a comprehensive set of data for improving Trade Compliance and operational efficiencies.

Nirmalya Suite's imports management makes navigating the complexity of manufacturing more efficient by handling admissibility requirements, supplier screenings, documentation generation, and recordkeeping. Contact us to learn how Nirmalya Suite can provide your organization with more control over each step in the process.