Document Determination and Generation

Document Determination and Generation Issues and Challenges

Although many governments now encourage electronic filing of global trade information, data is still largely exchanged in the form of trade documents. Filling out forms has always been an exercise in collecting the right data and putting in the format required by the recipient. Although paper has largely been eliminated, PDFs have taken its place.

Importers and exporters have the responsibility to generate and transmit forms to freight forwarders, customers and appropriate government authorities. Each transaction may have several associated trade documents that must be sent to different parties based on country specific trade regulations. Once those documents are sent, they may need to be revised and ultimately stored with the transaction for audit and reference purposes.

How Amber Road Can Help

Amber Road uses a document generation system to manage the activities associated with trade document determination, generation, and storage.

An extensive set of configurable business rules help determine which trade documents are required for the transaction, based on criteria such as the transaction type, countries of import and export and trading partner. The solution draws trade document requirements from the Global Knowledge^® database, which is updated daily by Amber Road's network of In-Country Content Providers (ICCP) and trade specialists.

The system comes with numerous document templates in multiple languages, and also provides a flexible document design function for the creation of custom forms and templates. Trade documents are also generated according to configurable business rules. Since some rules may produce duplicate documents, there are consolidation and validation processes where field data is checked and verified. Electronic signatures are supported, where required on the forms.

Once documents are generated, they can be distributed by email to the appropriate parties. Trade documents are then stored in a centralized repository and associated to the transaction for efficient search and retrieval.