Document Management

Issues and Challenges

Although many governments now encourage electronic filing of global trade information, data is still largely exchanged in the form of "documents" and digital and paper-based. 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 have the responsibility to generate and transmit forms to freight forwarders, customers and appropriate government authorities. Each transaction may have several associated documents that must be sent to different parties. Once those documents are sent, they may need to be revised and they ultimately need to be stored with the transaction for audit and reference purposes.

Challenges include:

• Identifying the documents needed to satisfy the governments and agencies regulating the transaction

• Producing the documents needed by forwarders, customers and brokers

• Managing the revision, transmission, and storage of documents

• Tracking document requirements, such as notarization or whether an official version is needed

• Establishing and enforcing business processes around document functions

How Amber Road Can Help

Amber Road's Import Management solution uses a document generation system to manage the activities associated with document determination, distribution, and storage.

An extensive set of configurable business rules help determine which documents are required for the transaction, based on criteria such as the transaction type, countries of import and export and partner. The engine draws document requirements from the Global Knowledge^® system, which is updated daily by Amber Road global 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. 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. Documents are then stored in a centralized repository and associated to the transaction for efficient search and retrieval.