Who has the best TC software out there?

Hi
I am sure there are thousands of business users asking this question. I got a comment asking me which TC software has depth and real direction for a bunch of functionality.

I must admit I have sat on a few vendor selection committees for export compliance software and worked on RFP's and RFI's with some vendors. The Trade Compliance applications space has many players with different strengths and weaknesses. The applications also apply to many industries some of which have some very specialized needs. For example the software industry has needs for encryption export licensing while the high performance computing industry has computing power calculation needs (millions of theoretical operations per second) for exports. I will abstain from saying vendor x is good in this area and vendor y is good in another. Instead I will make some general comments.

I have found that Trade Compliance software aren't always good at both technology and functionality. Functionality depends on master data and code/programs. When I say technology I mean the basic building blocks that make the software work like architecture, tools etc.. While looking for vendors good ground work needs to be done on what the expectations are in terms of technology and functionality. Here are a few examples:

Technology: What's the expectation on application uptime and scalability?
Must the application be able to do screening of millions of customers against an addition to the restricted parties list? How quickly must the process complete? Must the application be able to do other screening at the same time? How quickly must it respond?

Functionality: Must license exceptions be automatically assigned? Must licenses received from the governments and created in the app be automatically incremented and decremented? What should be the false positive rate for Restricted Party Screening results?

If you plan to use a Service Oriented Architecture/Software as a Service/Application Service Provider vendor add on requirements on data security, service level, data queueing, response time etc...

In summary, go through vendor selection. Go in prepared with your requirements and scoring criteria. Make sure you cover both the technology and functionality aspects. If you are looking for a list of vendors let me know and I will send you links of publications by research houses of some of the major vendors in the fray. Choose carefully?

Please note, I do not have interest in the stock of any of the vendors, nor do I have any vested interest in any of them.

Cheers

Responses to the 2nd comment I received on my blog

Hi

Apologies for not blogging for a week. I am a member of Linkedin and decided to spread the word on my blog a few days ago. As a result I received some new readers and one interesting comment. I have copied and pasted below as the comments are hidden under each post.

Here's the comment:

"you should educate yourself on the difference between ERP companies and Best of Breed 3rd party companies... ERP companies get the most attention as they have the most money and the larger number of customers, but often their solutions lack depth and real direction as they tend to focus on broad strokes versus focused speciality. In the world of global trade software, speciality and realtime knowledge of what is going on in the marketplace is as yet not the domain of ERP providers, although their marketing people will say otherwise.

GTM and TMS applications are merging for sure, but what impact do you think the current credit crunch will have on Global Trade and outsourcing?"

First of all I would like to thank the reader for the comment.

Here is my response: When you refer to Best of Breed 3rd party companies I think you are referring to the first movers in the Trade Compliance applications space who have built a good amount of expertise in the space. While ERP companies, i.e. the big vendors, may be relative newcomers to the space, as you rightly pointed out, they do have more money. In addition to the money they have more experience building scalable software for large enterprises (read fortune 500). I do believe the ERP companies have a slight edge on the architecture side. I can't comment on functionality as I have worked mostly with a Best of Breed provider of Trade Compliance software. If the ERP companies are really behind in terms of functionality/data content I do think the business users will force them to quickly come up to speed. If they don't they will switch to Best of Breed companies. As we all know Trade Compliance users are a demanding lot :). It will be an interesting race to watch.

What will be the impact of credit crunch on Global Trade and outsourcing? Well I want to throw out a disclaimer before I put out my thoughts. I am not an economist or banker so take my prediction with a grain of salt as they may not turn out be true. I think the credit crunch will make credit more expensive and more difficult to find. So long as there are customers who are willing to absorb the higher costs or the seller finds smarter ways to keep the sales price down I don't think global trade will be impacted. If customers are too scared/worried to buy perhaps global trade will be impacted in the short term.

Cheers