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Agile and legally compliant foreign trade
Foreign trade has always been subject to special obligations to produce supporting documents and involved specific legal regulations. Last year, however, compliance in this area gained a whole new dimension: The embargo against Russia, the long-standing crisis in Greece and with the euro, the transatlantic TTIP free trade agreement: One thing applies across the board – being able to react quickly to changes; especially changes relevant to law.
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Compliance for foreign traders
The result: Topics such as compliance and supply chain optimisation coming increasingly into focus for people who deal with foreign trade; on both sides of the Atlantic. This has been confirmed by an international study, which establishes the top issues for foreign trade each year and is commissioned by the Baden-Württemberg Cooperative State University, amongst others. For this year’s “Global Trade Management Agenda”, the authors surveyed 177 experts in foreign trade and logistics from various industries – mainly in Germany and Great Britain.
Increasing your ability to react
The trade managers see the guaranteeing of legal security, the implementation of changes to customs law, and the minimisation of risk along the supply chain as the key priorities for the coming months. The consequences of the embargo issue are clearly noticeable here. But the managers also want to improve the supply chain, to shorten lead and delivery times and, not least, to become more agile so that they can react more quickly to changes in the market. The topic of cost optimisation was ranked far behind the compliance issues in the 2015 agenda. Any further questions?
Document management: Essential for compliance
Perhaps just one: How is this relevant to an EASY blog? The answer: Those looking for greater agility, to react more quickly to legal changes and to be able to find and provide the required information at all times cannot ignore the possibilities offered by an automated workflow, a powerful digital document management system, and a legally compliant digital archiving system. After all, these are the only systems that allow you to display a wide range of documents – from orders to import documents and customs documents to incoming documents – at the touch of a button, at all times. And these are the only systems to show the weaknesses and inefficiencies that can be well hidden in long, international supply chains.