You Need to Get a Handle on Your Global Trade Risks – FAST!

Because, if you don’t, in three months, one in every five shipments you make is going to result in a large fine! By the end of May, the United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is expected to issue a proposed rule that would make various changes to increase the accuracy and reliability of the advance information submitted under the Importer Security Filing (ISF or 10+2). No big deal, right? Wrong! It is further expected that the final ISF rule will follow later this year and that the CBP will, upon release of the new rule, begin to enforce (the full extent of) the penalties associated with the ISF.

This is a major risk for most organizations as the most recent statistic that is publicly available where 10+2 compliance is concerned is a compliance rate of 80%. In other words, 20% of shipments are not compliant! It’s hard to say why. It could be because, up until now, the CBP has not issued much (if anything) in the way of penalties for violations and failures, and many importers, (customers) brokers, and forwarders are taking advantage of the situation and not doing anything to improve their processes and procedures when they (regularly) make late and inaccurate filings. And if this is the case, this is a dangerous game — for you!

We have to remember that the CBP has the right to enforce a minimum fine of $5,000 for EACH 10+2 violation. If you do a lot of importing, this will add up fast if you are in violation with every fifth shipment. Even if you only did 10 inbound shipments a month, you could expect to lose at least 120K a year to fines! And that’s (significantly) more* than what an average mid-size organization can expect to pay for an annual license to a basic SaaS e-Trade Document management system these days. So they should get one, and begin to get a grip on their global trade risks, fast, before they burn money needlessly.

* A good (end-to-end) global trade management system will still run you six figures, but it goes way beyond e-Document management and provides multiple ROI in terms of process improvement, tactical man-hour reduction, global supply chain visibility, compliance monitoring, etc. (But if you’re small, or just getting started, you can start with just the e-Document management and ease your way into a bigger system.)

DropShip Commerce Brings Drop-Shipping and e-Commerce Enablement to the Distributor and Retailer Masses

On Monday, we announced that BizSlate Just Released its ERP for Mid-Sized Distributors and Retailers that gave the masses a useable, and affordable, ERP solution with exceptional supply chain support — especially where inventory and order management were concerned. With the BizSlate ERP, it’s a breeze for a retailer to order hundreds of variants of dozens of SKUs with a few mouse-clicks and keystrokes and to see inventory requirements at any point in time in the future. And this is great for inventory and storefront management, but what about the e-Store?

As more and more retailers need to turn to online sales to compete in the new marketplace where a consumer can get almost anything she wants online — and do so within two days, as the bigger retailers, following Amazon’s lead, are now packing and shipping same-day if an order is received by the cut-off time — the mid-sized and small retailers have to offer the same convenience or get pushed out of the market. Also, sometimes the only way to survive is to create a unique shopping experience for a niche market and offer all of the products, and only the products, related to that niche through a single, customized storefront. (For example, maybe the way to survive is to cater to the fantasy gaming enthusiast and provide a unified storefront for all of the relevant card games, board games, video games, RPGs, and spin-off/related novels and/or movies when the shopper might normally have to go to a local comic/game shop, book store, and online DVD store to find the items of interest.)

However, this need to both integrate (live) inventory (feeds) from dozens, and sometimes hundreds of suppliers (like Amazon) does, and then parse a customer order into separate orders for each vendor that is supplying an item to you and sending it direct to the consumer through its drop-shipping capabilities poses an integration nightmare for the average e-tailer. The reality is that every supplier will have a different database format / taxonomy and every other supplier will have a different access method. One (group of) suppliers will provide access through an FTP site that will contain inventory exports (in a multitude of raw or compressed file formats), another (group) will provide database access through a secure tunnel, the more technical will provide a web API, and the non-technical will e-mail spreadsheets. Some will use (a variation of) CSV format, some will be on an (old) version of EDI, the more techie will have an XML format, etc. Nightmare!

But this is only a quarter of the challenge. The inventory files need to be processed and the relevant data pushed to the live site, after a human has selected or verified what items need to be pushed. Then, the orders need to be pulled from the live site, parsed, and the proper data pushed back to the suppliers for (drop) shipping in the required time-frame — in the format required by the suppliers.

In other words, today’s small-and-mid-sized e-tailers need a solution that makes it trivial to get inventory manifests (if you will), process those manifest, select (groups of) product(s) for the online store, (create a schedule to) push those products to the store, define rules for parsing orders and pushing them back to the appropriate suppliers (on a schedule), create the requisite e-documention, and push the documents to the vendors and the order management systems.

This is the system that DropShip Commerce provides, and it’s the first solution that the doctor has seen that solves the round-trip mid-market problem in a manner uniquely tailored to the specific needs of retailers and their drop-shipping suppliers. And like the other modern SaaS solutions on the market, it’s slick, quick, and very easy to use. By targeting a specific, relatively unaddressed, problem for a specific vertical (consumer-oriented retail), like BizSlate, they were able to create a unique solution that is just what the average mid-sized e-Tailer needs. The DropShip Commerce solution is definitely something the average mid-size e-Tailer that sources from multiple suppliers needs to check out if they haven’t already.

BizSlate Releases its ERP for Mid-Sized Distributors and Retailers to the Masses

Last fall we introduced you to BizSlate, an ERP for small to mid-size distributors and retailers that is bringing a useable, affordable ERP solution with exceptional supply chain support to the masses. (Basically, it’s doing what Compiere and Made2Manage did for small to mid-size manufacturers.)

As per our our introductory post, the founders, who were with Ezcom software, noticed the (utter) lack of appropriate ERP support for the small and mid-sized retail and distribution space and decided they needed to do something about it. The solution? A new SaaS based ERP system (re) built from the ground up to address the everyday accounting, inventory, catalog management, and order management/e-Procurement requirements of small and mid-sized distributors through a simple web-interface that is as easy to use as most of the new SaaS e-Procurement enterprise systems on the market.

Developed in conjunction with two dozen beta users, as per this VentureBeat article, Version 1 is now launched and is quite slick. As per our last post, the batch create function is incredibly powerful and easy to use. Not only can an administrator batch-create new products by entering all of the base product information, but he or she can select categories, suppliers, locations, terms, etc. from easy-to-use auto-complete pull-downs or from generic saved templates for product type. Extensive profiles can be created in a matter of minutes and hundreds of line items in a matter of seconds.

Order generation is as quick and painless as possible. A user can easily add items to an order through a simple-to-use but powerful search function that allows a user to search by name, code, style, or other attribute values and, as mentioned in the VentureBeat article, order generation can be done on the showroom floor on a mobile (Android or iOS) tablet. As per the batch generation, customer information, (preferred) supplier(s), terms, and other data can be quickly retrieved from pre-populated lists.

And the system even supports a sales order multi-edit capability which allows a user to update information across multiple sales orders (such as ship dates, payment terms, shipment location, etc.) simultaneously and to rationalize orders as need be. For example, if necessary, orders can be combined, split, and individual line items swapped. This is a powerful capability as it negates the need for orders to be cancelled and recreated or items to be deleted from one order and then added to another order, two very error prone processes.

And the rest of the system, which is configured around inventory, logistics, customer, supplier, and accounting management, is quite easy to use as well — and, in some instances, quit powerful. Consider inventory management — searches can include both open stock, pre-packs, and in-transit inventory and be performed with respect to any date. Thus, if a customer doesn’t want an order to be shipped for a week, you can see how many units you will have in a week after all orders scheduled to be received and shipped out over the next week are accounted for. The ability to search open stock and pre-packs together or separately is quite powerful. For example, let’s say a customer wants an order tomorrow, but you don’t have the open stock and if you don’t ship tomorrow, you lose the order. You can search pre-packs, determine that there is enough inventory in pre-packs, send someone into the warehouse to rip the pre-packs open, assemble the inventory and ship — and then replace the pre-packs with an order arriving in two days to be shipped out in the order the pre-packs were intended for that doesn’t have to ship for three days — and get a sale you would likely have missed otherwise.

With regards to inventory, customer, and supplier management — the ability to track the different SKUs used by each customer and supplier for each product and cross-correlate them across the supply chain is quite valuable. This allows you to search inventory and available suppliers off of a customer’s SKU and get complete, accurate information every time.

The document generation functionality was very well thought out — for each customer you can define what should be on the packing slip and invoice in addition to default shipment profiles to facilitate quick order entries. This simplifies the customer’s order verification and invoice processing and can speed up your payments. Similarly, you can specify what information should go on the good’s receipt to the supplier, what information should be associated with the payment, and what information should be matched before payment is issued. This simplifies transaction management for Accounts Payable and minimizes the chances of over-payment or payment for merchandise not received. And the system can even generate customized receiving forms for the warehouse personnel that makes it easy for them to check off items, and easy for whomever is doing data entry to check it off if they don’t have mobile system access.

It’s one slick SaaS solution and if you are a mid-sized retailer or distributor, BizSlate should be on your must-review list.

All Hail the Old China!

And by that I mean Mexico! I was thrilled to see this recent opinion piece in the New York times on The Tijuana Connection, a Template for Growth that said, for many (North) American manufacturers that need to beat Chinese Rivals that Mexico is the New China because it shows that a new generation of entrepreneurs are discovering what a few old greybeards have known all along — Mexico is cheap, efficient, and full of potential (like the 115,000 engineering students it graduates each year, which, per capita, is triple the U.S. graduate count).

Plus, it has little known secrets like Tijuana which, in addition to its reputation of party central is also electronics central — with a growing number of North American, European and Asian (including Sony and Samsung) companies opening and running factories that assemble consumer goods (such as TVs and Computers), medical devices, and even aerospace assemblies. And its prime location, just across the border from San Diego, means that an American company with an engineering office in San Diego can quickly and easily supervise production in the Mexican factory as needed, as it’s a quick drive across the border (for business people in the fast-track lane). (Plus, as the article notes, there is Juárez where Foxconn has a factory; Querétaro, which builds GM engines; and Boeing factories.)

But the sad thing is that the beardless don’t remember that this is not a new Mexico — this is the old Mexico finally being recognized for the value it has always provided. There’s a reason the outsourced manufacturing craze started with Mexico and will return to Mexico — labour costs are relatively cheap, capability is high, logistics and (remote) management costs are extremely affordable and manageable, English is relatively common (and fluency is at least 7 times that of China), and culture is a close fit.

Si quieres dinero y fama, que no te agarre el sol en la cama.