Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Export compliance business models and related it solutions

Hi
I'd like to discuss business models in Export Compliance.
I have come across three models.
Model 1: Physical exports: This model involves an order life cycle that is typically between 1 day to up to a few months. The shipment of product needs to be accompanied with documents such as the commercial invoice that need to have export licensing data on it. If the customers are repeat customers it would make sense to retain the latest restricted party list (RPL) screening results and also history. Since the order life cycle is a few days there is some breathing room for manual intervention to resolve RPL and export licensing issues.

Model 2: Online downloads: The second model is for products that don't need to be physically shipped. Example, online downloads. This model involves an order life cycle which ranges from a few seconds to a few minutes. Since the product doesn't need to be shipped there generally isn't a need for shipping documents. The customers aren't generally repeat customers and therefore their RPL results may not need to be reused and a history for the customer may not need to be retained. Since the order life cycle is a few minutes there is very little time for manual intervention to resolve RPL and export licensing issues. This model may have higher volumes that the first model.

Model 3: Site access: Export compliance screening may be required when customers, vendors and other persons access a company's facility. The life cycle of the transaction is a matter of seconds as the person is waiting to enter the building/facility. The person may not be a repeat visitor so the RPL screening results may not need to be retained. The history may also not need to be retained. Since the life cycle of the transaction is very short there may be little room for manual intervention to resolve issues. The volume of transactions in this model will vary based on the number of visitors.

Please add a comment if you are aware of another model.

Now moving to the applications that support these models. Let's say your company uses more than one model and your volumes/projected volumes are large.It makes absolutely good sense to have two applications/instances of an application support the two models. The only exception being the needs for model Model 2 and Model 3 may potentially be combined into one. I think having one application that satisfies the needs for Model 1 and Model 2 isn't the best course of action.

Let me know your thoughts/comments.
Cheers
 
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