At the end of 2004, TradeBeam Holdings, Inc., a leading provider of global trade management (GTM) solutions that streamline global trading processes for enterprises and their partners, announced that it has acquired the assets of Open Harbor, a leading provider of international trade logistics (ITL) solutions. TradeBeam solutions include import and export compliance and global trade finance solutions like open account and letter of credit (LC) management, but also inventory management, shipment tracking, and supply chain electronic management (SCEM). The vendor has over 3,000 customers with users in over 100 countries worldwide. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Founded in 1999, Open Harbor possessed deep expertise in trade compliance, including a comprehensive centralized repository of global trade content (harmonization engine) containing millions of trade rules from more than sixty countries, in a one-to-one relationship manner. The company was considered a leading player in the landed cost management arena. Customers leveraged its technology and experience to gain crucial accurate pricing for international orders based on an aggregate of product cost, shipping costs, and fees charged by exporting and importing countries. However, the failure of Open Harbor, however, was not caused by lack of market demand and opportunities, but unfortunately by poor management.
Almost any business process, particularly GTM practices need to have access to trade experts that can interpret and apply trade regulations to improve operational and financial performance and Open Harbor was no exception. TradeBeam, on the other had focused more on the application side of trade management, such as creating shipment tracking, insurance, event management, and other applications central to the actual movement of goods.
Nowadays even small shippers can leverage import/export software through third parties. Specialized software and managed service providers working behind the scenes make it possible for carriers and freight forwarders to offer selected services to their customers, such as landed-cost calculators, product classification, and document preparation, often on a fee-per-transaction basis. For example, international shipping and freight companies DHL and FedEx partnered with Open Harbor and NextLinx respectively. NextLinx, database carries nearly 20,000 HTS product classifications and more than 40 landed cost components for 100 countries, accounting for about 95 percent of the entire world's trade.
TradeBeam believes that Open Harbor brings a logical extension to its current offering, because customers will now have enhanced access to the latest global trade content of more than sixty countries, as well as landed cost management functions. The move continues the strategic expansion of TradeBeam's product footprint, which covers the entire life cycle of global trade across order, logistics, and financial settlement activities—all to improve operating efficiencies and working capital. This should also provide a complimentary vertical focus, since Open Harbor had developed solutions and attracted clients in the hi-tech and automotive markets.
As seen by this move by TradeBeam, the GTM space is consolidating and point solution providers are disappearing. The leaders seem understand that to truly improve global trade, one must be able to manage both the physical and financial supply chain. Across the entire trade transaction export/import compliance, document management, SCEM, security and contract issues must be managed along side purchase order processing, LC management, pre- and post-shipment financing, reconciliation, invoice presentment, foreign exchange, and insurance management.
Product integration between TradeBeam and Open Harbor should be complete by the second half of 2005, with TradeBeam pledging to maintain uninterrupted service and support to a key group of Open Harbor clients during immediate transition phase and post contract execution. TradeBeam has also been communicating with Open Harbor's customers to understand their specific circumstances, the scope of their projects, and to jointly agree on terms to work together to ensure business goals are aligned for both companies.
According to the World Trade Organization (WTO), global trade has grown at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.3 percent since 1980. Furthermore because global trade volume is in excess of $8 trillion (USD) per year, it is clear that the management of this process is becoming an integral part of business. The expansion of free trade agreements, outsourcing, and increased government security requirements make implementing a GTM solution a strategic priority.
Most supply chain management (SCM), let alone enterprise resource planning (ERP) vendors typically lack strong international trade logistics (ITL) and global trade management (GTM) capabilities. Simply put, while technology may be rendering a world that appears a lot smaller, in reality, the world has become a lot more complicated in the process. Most businesses are ill-prepared for the many barriers that inevitably still exist to conducting international business over the Internet.
The Internet has enabled a networked world enabling a communication infrastructure and emerging enterprise applications, which have opened the door for international trade in earnest. But not many applications really offer multi-enterprise services and software to automate the complex multimodal transportation and Internet-based logistics management needs of a global trading network. In other words, most modern Web-based, buy- and sell-side applications fall well short of providing automated global trade management and a traditional international trade logistics.
As described in more detail in International Trade or ITL Adoption, ITL and GTM, which are execution systems designed to automate the import/export business process. Their basic functional components are trade documentation generation and transmission, and regulatory compliance validation, and include a complex exchange of information between multiple entities. Among these entries are suppliers, carriers, freight forwarders, customs brokers, banking institutions, and other third party transportation and storage providers. A true ITL/GTM system is, in effect, an inter-enterprise resource management system, and requires a data model that takes into account the breadth and depth of information exchanged between this multiplicity of interrelated entities. Thus, ITL/GTM systems should support export and import borders-crossing processes, documentation, and compliance (which are incomprehensible to ordinary mortals), accounting, and financial reporting in a multicurrency, multilingual, and multi-units of measure (UOM) environment.
When we talk about the risks of globalization, many are usually referring to the threat of domestic jobs moving overseas. Global trade compliance is rarely discussed, even though it poses a risk that might affect almost every manufacturer that either imports or exports. Namely, getting these goods and parts shipped from one country to another is a daunting task and needs the support of a GTM software and service provider with a combination of global trade domain knowledge, proven processes, and international trade best practices.
Each of the nearly 200 countries in the world has individual governmental requirements for importing and exporting goods, where one has to account for factors like tariffs and duties, country-to-country preferences and anti-dumping laws—with the danger of incurring hidden costs at every step. If that is not complex enough, the events of September 11, 2001 have increased the scrutiny countries place on global trade and can impact costs adversely. According to the Brookings Institution, the cost of slowing the delivery of imported goods by just one day because of additional security checks could amount to $7 billion (USD) per year. Stringent new documentation and homeland security requirements are placing serious legal and financial consequences on importers and exporters that violate these constantly changing trade regulations. Furthermore, the burden is on the importer/exporter to know exactly what the regulations are and how to comply with them.
Although global trade requires the multimodal transportation of goods across borders, many international shippers do not yet have e-logistics software that provides the necessary visibility and flexibility to e-businesses wanting to automate their global supply chains. They also do not have e-procurement software that can analyze the total landed cost, including all the costs of sourcing and shipping a product internationally, customs management, tariffs, transportation, cost of goods, etc. However, a number of Internet-based logistics tools are helping companies analyze and reduce costs by automating the processes of booking shipments, keeping customers informed, and making sure goods arrive on time (for more information, see Understanding the True Cost of Sourcing). Savvy customers have increasingly been asking for help in researching costs for importing from different countries. By using software to check duties, taxes, and trade regulations in the potential countries of origin, GTM experts should be able to create "what-if" scenarios that will help importers make the right decision.
GTM is a new and potentially very large enterprise applications space that has been compared by some to be the next corporate paradigm after enterprise resource planning (ERP). TradeBeam is increasingly considered as a category thought-leader owing to its significant "first mover advantage". It has had a few years head start compared to most competitors, and it started with an "end-to-end" GTM portfolio in mind, instead of trying to retrofit its GTM solution into similar enterprise applications. So far, TradeBeam has an impressive functional scope progress and promises much more to come in the future.
TradeBeam is a GTM company providing both software and services. Its offering is an on-demand suite of applications that are integrated into one platform. The suite is based on the idea of allowing corporations to manage their global orders, control global shipments, and optimize global finance. Because managing global trade involves two parallel and interrelated supply chains, the physical and the financial, sharing data between the two chains throughout an international transaction, is crucial (see figure 1). Leveraging this concept, TradeBeam helps corporations save time and improve working capital for order-to-cash and procure-to-pay cycles.
TradeBeam's integrated solutions provide import and export compliance, inventory management, shipment tracking, SCEM, and global trade finance solutions such as open account and LC management. Implementing TradeBeam solutions might thus enable corporations to grow top-line revenue and reduce supply chain costs; provide full visibility into shipments; minimize working capital in inventory and accounts receivable (AR); comply with required governmental reporting and security mandates; and measure the efficiency and performance of global trade policies, procedures and trading partners. TradeBeam believes its innovative offering represents a major step forward for companies that want to address cross-border security concerns while improving both their physical supply chain processes and their cash flow and working capital management.
Founded in 1999, Open Harbor possessed deep expertise in trade compliance, including a comprehensive centralized repository of global trade content (harmonization engine) containing millions of trade rules from more than sixty countries, in a one-to-one relationship manner. The company was considered a leading player in the landed cost management arena. Customers leveraged its technology and experience to gain crucial accurate pricing for international orders based on an aggregate of product cost, shipping costs, and fees charged by exporting and importing countries. However, the failure of Open Harbor, however, was not caused by lack of market demand and opportunities, but unfortunately by poor management.
Almost any business process, particularly GTM practices need to have access to trade experts that can interpret and apply trade regulations to improve operational and financial performance and Open Harbor was no exception. TradeBeam, on the other had focused more on the application side of trade management, such as creating shipment tracking, insurance, event management, and other applications central to the actual movement of goods.
Nowadays even small shippers can leverage import/export software through third parties. Specialized software and managed service providers working behind the scenes make it possible for carriers and freight forwarders to offer selected services to their customers, such as landed-cost calculators, product classification, and document preparation, often on a fee-per-transaction basis. For example, international shipping and freight companies DHL and FedEx partnered with Open Harbor and NextLinx respectively. NextLinx, database carries nearly 20,000 HTS product classifications and more than 40 landed cost components for 100 countries, accounting for about 95 percent of the entire world's trade.
TradeBeam believes that Open Harbor brings a logical extension to its current offering, because customers will now have enhanced access to the latest global trade content of more than sixty countries, as well as landed cost management functions. The move continues the strategic expansion of TradeBeam's product footprint, which covers the entire life cycle of global trade across order, logistics, and financial settlement activities—all to improve operating efficiencies and working capital. This should also provide a complimentary vertical focus, since Open Harbor had developed solutions and attracted clients in the hi-tech and automotive markets.
As seen by this move by TradeBeam, the GTM space is consolidating and point solution providers are disappearing. The leaders seem understand that to truly improve global trade, one must be able to manage both the physical and financial supply chain. Across the entire trade transaction export/import compliance, document management, SCEM, security and contract issues must be managed along side purchase order processing, LC management, pre- and post-shipment financing, reconciliation, invoice presentment, foreign exchange, and insurance management.
Product integration between TradeBeam and Open Harbor should be complete by the second half of 2005, with TradeBeam pledging to maintain uninterrupted service and support to a key group of Open Harbor clients during immediate transition phase and post contract execution. TradeBeam has also been communicating with Open Harbor's customers to understand their specific circumstances, the scope of their projects, and to jointly agree on terms to work together to ensure business goals are aligned for both companies.
According to the World Trade Organization (WTO), global trade has grown at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.3 percent since 1980. Furthermore because global trade volume is in excess of $8 trillion (USD) per year, it is clear that the management of this process is becoming an integral part of business. The expansion of free trade agreements, outsourcing, and increased government security requirements make implementing a GTM solution a strategic priority.
Most supply chain management (SCM), let alone enterprise resource planning (ERP) vendors typically lack strong international trade logistics (ITL) and global trade management (GTM) capabilities. Simply put, while technology may be rendering a world that appears a lot smaller, in reality, the world has become a lot more complicated in the process. Most businesses are ill-prepared for the many barriers that inevitably still exist to conducting international business over the Internet.
The Internet has enabled a networked world enabling a communication infrastructure and emerging enterprise applications, which have opened the door for international trade in earnest. But not many applications really offer multi-enterprise services and software to automate the complex multimodal transportation and Internet-based logistics management needs of a global trading network. In other words, most modern Web-based, buy- and sell-side applications fall well short of providing automated global trade management and a traditional international trade logistics.
As described in more detail in International Trade or ITL Adoption, ITL and GTM, which are execution systems designed to automate the import/export business process. Their basic functional components are trade documentation generation and transmission, and regulatory compliance validation, and include a complex exchange of information between multiple entities. Among these entries are suppliers, carriers, freight forwarders, customs brokers, banking institutions, and other third party transportation and storage providers. A true ITL/GTM system is, in effect, an inter-enterprise resource management system, and requires a data model that takes into account the breadth and depth of information exchanged between this multiplicity of interrelated entities. Thus, ITL/GTM systems should support export and import borders-crossing processes, documentation, and compliance (which are incomprehensible to ordinary mortals), accounting, and financial reporting in a multicurrency, multilingual, and multi-units of measure (UOM) environment.
When we talk about the risks of globalization, many are usually referring to the threat of domestic jobs moving overseas. Global trade compliance is rarely discussed, even though it poses a risk that might affect almost every manufacturer that either imports or exports. Namely, getting these goods and parts shipped from one country to another is a daunting task and needs the support of a GTM software and service provider with a combination of global trade domain knowledge, proven processes, and international trade best practices.
Each of the nearly 200 countries in the world has individual governmental requirements for importing and exporting goods, where one has to account for factors like tariffs and duties, country-to-country preferences and anti-dumping laws—with the danger of incurring hidden costs at every step. If that is not complex enough, the events of September 11, 2001 have increased the scrutiny countries place on global trade and can impact costs adversely. According to the Brookings Institution, the cost of slowing the delivery of imported goods by just one day because of additional security checks could amount to $7 billion (USD) per year. Stringent new documentation and homeland security requirements are placing serious legal and financial consequences on importers and exporters that violate these constantly changing trade regulations. Furthermore, the burden is on the importer/exporter to know exactly what the regulations are and how to comply with them.
Although global trade requires the multimodal transportation of goods across borders, many international shippers do not yet have e-logistics software that provides the necessary visibility and flexibility to e-businesses wanting to automate their global supply chains. They also do not have e-procurement software that can analyze the total landed cost, including all the costs of sourcing and shipping a product internationally, customs management, tariffs, transportation, cost of goods, etc. However, a number of Internet-based logistics tools are helping companies analyze and reduce costs by automating the processes of booking shipments, keeping customers informed, and making sure goods arrive on time (for more information, see Understanding the True Cost of Sourcing). Savvy customers have increasingly been asking for help in researching costs for importing from different countries. By using software to check duties, taxes, and trade regulations in the potential countries of origin, GTM experts should be able to create "what-if" scenarios that will help importers make the right decision.
GTM is a new and potentially very large enterprise applications space that has been compared by some to be the next corporate paradigm after enterprise resource planning (ERP). TradeBeam is increasingly considered as a category thought-leader owing to its significant "first mover advantage". It has had a few years head start compared to most competitors, and it started with an "end-to-end" GTM portfolio in mind, instead of trying to retrofit its GTM solution into similar enterprise applications. So far, TradeBeam has an impressive functional scope progress and promises much more to come in the future.
TradeBeam is a GTM company providing both software and services. Its offering is an on-demand suite of applications that are integrated into one platform. The suite is based on the idea of allowing corporations to manage their global orders, control global shipments, and optimize global finance. Because managing global trade involves two parallel and interrelated supply chains, the physical and the financial, sharing data between the two chains throughout an international transaction, is crucial (see figure 1). Leveraging this concept, TradeBeam helps corporations save time and improve working capital for order-to-cash and procure-to-pay cycles.
TradeBeam's integrated solutions provide import and export compliance, inventory management, shipment tracking, SCEM, and global trade finance solutions such as open account and LC management. Implementing TradeBeam solutions might thus enable corporations to grow top-line revenue and reduce supply chain costs; provide full visibility into shipments; minimize working capital in inventory and accounts receivable (AR); comply with required governmental reporting and security mandates; and measure the efficiency and performance of global trade policies, procedures and trading partners. TradeBeam believes its innovative offering represents a major step forward for companies that want to address cross-border security concerns while improving both their physical supply chain processes and their cash flow and working capital management.
No comments:
Post a Comment