Boosting Supply Chain Velocity & Visibility with Descartes Global Trade Data Solutions

As specialists in providing global trade compliance managed services programs to the fortune 100 and other trade compliance conscious companies, Vigilant relies on Descartes’ advanced global trade management software to ensure clients’ compliance with ever-changing global regulations. Vigilant understands that ensuring compliance requires transparency, accountability and an ability to provide an audit trail which can only be achieved by leveraging technology. By including Descartes’ global trade management software as part of its solutions and managed services programs, Vigilant’s clients experience greater operational efficiencies, increased visibility to their supply chain, improved communications, fewer disruptions to shipments and improved ROI on their compliance program.

Reactive vs. Strategic Compliance
Despite the significant impact of trade compliance on supply chain performance, many companies are slow to transition from manual and often reactive global trade compliance activities to a strategic, technology-enabled compliance program which not only mitigates risk, but also provides bottom line cost savings. Moreover, these same companies try to remain compliant without a central database for recordkeeping, document storage and global access to critical information. They increase their risk by lacking an audit trail to support compliance decisions and failing to communicate compliance related changes in a timely manner.

– Dave Moore, CEO, Vigilant Global Trade Service

Vigilant helps its clients transform from reactive, unsupported compliance into a proactive, well-defined, strategic global trade compliance program. To this end, Vigilant understands that worldwide product classifications and the screening of business partners and transactions are the fundamental building blocks of most compliance programs. The company required dynamic technology solutions that would streamline and consolidate worldwide product classifications; provide a central database for easy access to worldwide classifications and related documentation from anywhere around the world; manage compliance down to the SKU, part or item level; and minimize the burden of denied party screening while providing accurate, timely global trade solutions.

Technology Drives Strategic Global Trade Compliance
Global trade compliance is becoming increasingly important to supply chain performance. Companies face a proliferation of Free Trade Agreements (FTA), increased Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Requests for Information, complex Preferential Trade Programs, country- and industry-specific regulations, and frequently-updated sanctioned party lists. With Descartes’ cloud-based global trade management solutions, companies are better positioned to keep pace with regulatory changes in order to demonstrate reasonable care, minimize trade barriers, decrease duty spend, avoid compliance fines and penalties, and meet the unique demands of different industry sectors.

“With a strategic compliance program, our clients aren’t blinded by changes coming down the pipe and have the ability to handle unplanned spikes in volumes without compromising compliance. Descartes helps us provide comprehensive and scalable solutions in support of worldwide product classifications, customs compliance, free trade agreements and denied party screening, which evolve over time to meet constantly changing compliance requirements. By taking a proactive approach to trade compliance, our clients successfully minimize risk and reduce both direct and indirect operational costs,” says Derek Abramovitch, Partner and Chief Relationship Officer at Vigilant.

With Descartes MK Denied Party Screening™, Vigilant has real-time access to industry-leading cloud-based solutions to efficiently and dynamically screen client data against one of the most comprehensive databases of restricted and denied parties in the industry.

Vigilant leverages Descartes CustomsInfo™ Reference to help clients make better classification decisions. With a sizable database of over 6 million reference documents and advanced Harmonized System (HS) code search capabilities, the cloud-based solution gives Vigilant a single source of reliable, up-to-date trade data. Using Descartes CustomsInfo™ Manager, Vigilant has a compliance workbench that simplifies compliance and accelerates decision-making with continually populated trade information, and enhanced auditing and oversight with automatic recordkeeping of each step in a compliance workflow. The solution also centralizes large and small classification projects across geographically dispersed organizations. Moreover, Vigilant knows that Descartes will help their clients proactively stay compliant by monitoring regulatory changes and notifying them of potential risks.

Improved Cycle Time
The Descartes solution helps eliminate bottlenecks caused by shipment delays. By ensuring classification accuracy and up-todate global trade compliance and DPS data, workflow and cycle time improve.

Reduce Risk
With fines that can range into the billions of dollars, the risk of errors, shipment disruptions and penalties is greatly reduced with the Descartes solution. Dynamic, automated screening and access to a vast database of regulations, rulings and duty data ensure peace of mind.

Cost Saving
With the Descartes solution, Vigilant helps its clients navigate Preferential Trade Programs, FTAs, and Regional Trade Agreements that have reached record levels (445 policies worldwide). As a result, Vigilant can help its clients to reduce duty spend, take advantage of FTAs and minimize the risk of penalties.

Time and Labor Saving
By automating compliance decisions with Descartes, Vigilant’s clients benefit from their ability to classify goods up to 6 times faster than with manual processes. In addition, Vigilant increases clients’ efficiency and productivity by leveraging a single point-of-access to Descartes’ up-to-date comprehensive database of restricted and denied parties, some of which can change hourly.