Recently, the European Commission published a proposal for a Directive on Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence in February, 2022. This publication proposes an EU standard for human rights & environmental due diligence. The main aim of this Directive is to bring international standards into the European law to prevent the negative consequences of global business activities.
Global trade, valued at US$ 28 trillion annually, is the backbone of the world economy. Cross-border trade, however, is still a complex process that is majorly dependent on paper documents.
On the 10th of May 2022, in the Queen’s Speech which marks the beginning of the new UK parliament term, the UK Prime Minister and His Royal Highness the Prince Of Wales announced the Electronic Trade Documents Bill. The Electronic Trade Documents Report and Bill is one of the first pieces of proposed legislation that arose from The Law Commission’s recent focus on new technologies.
The Electronic Trade Documents Bill is meant to lower trade administration costs for businesses and increase the overall efficiency because the processing time of the same is faster than paper documents and it is a cheaper alternative as well.
As of the end of 2021, the ICC (International Chamber of Commerce) formed a digital legal reform advisory board that comprises industry, policy, and intergovernmental actors in the trade finance and global trade sector, intending to accelerate reforms needed to enable digital trade.
Every major and minor text available at the moment highlights the new challenges and risks associated with the globalizing world economy, thus giving a global perspective on business operations more relevance. With the evolution of globalization, corporate activities are expected to cope with the influence along with the opportunities that arise from it. This is where supply chain automation platforms come to the fore, making the transition smoother.
B2B eCommerce is an amalgamation of two of the most sought-after services in the twenty-first century – a sales transaction between two businesses. In simple words, if you’re a company selling its products or services to another company, then you’re partaking in a B2B eCommerce transaction. At present, the global business digital commerce market is valued at 6 times that of the B2C (business to consumer) market.
The Dubai Wood Show (initiated in 2006) can be defined as the leading destination for timber industry professionals worldwide. It is also the region’s sole extensive large-scale B2B trade show for professionals across the wood and woodworking machinery industry.
The G7 countries, an intergovernmental organization consisting of Italy, Japan, the UK, the US, Germany, France, and Canada, agreed to a framework in May that champions the work of UNCITRAL (United Nations Commission on International Trade) and promotes the adoption of its MLETR (Model Law on Electronic Transferable Records). This gives electronic trade documents like the eBL (electronic bill of lading) the same legal standing as their physical paper-based counterparts.
If we take a look at the shipping industry, we would see that one of the most common challenges faced by them is that of real-time freight analytics. With the increasing competition and customer demands, new and improved analysis and response methods are highly required.
Rapid digitalization is affecting almost all aspects of life which include the way people interact, shop, work, or receive services to create or exchange values. Digital data is one of the key factors of the economic sustainability of the world, as a whole. It has also become a major strategic asset for both social and private value. The commerce of today’s time mostly is based on an organization’s ability to move data across borders, without any restrictions.
We have seen in the past that investing in bigger production capacities and economies of scale was the only way to increase profitability. However, things have turned for the better in recent times, all thanks to better sales and supply chain management technology. With this technology, the export sales team can automate and improve the export shipments and sales, manage negotiations and tenders under one platform, and stay updated with the global timber markets.
The word as we had known it has changed, especially post the Novel Coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) in 2021. With competition rising across sectors, it has become crucial to stand out from the crowd, no matter what. A considerable time is typically spent by developers to come up with online tools, testing, beta-testing, and marketing the same.
The cost of shipping has grown dramatically since 2020 and the new normal is all about the strong battle for capacity for sea freight. With additional capacity only coming slowly, freight will remain at unprecedented levels this year, and in the long run, might go beyond pre-pandemic levels.
The twenty-first century is all about going digital, especially now, when the world is recovering from the Novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Businesses are struggling to get their footing back in the industry and reach the targeted clientele who are probably sitting at home in front of their screens, working, instead of going out. What started from the simple transition of telephones to smartphones and handwritten letters to instant messages or emails, have now taken a turn for the better and become a medium for people to interact and run their business on without any glitches.
Digital trade, over the years, has taken a more serious turn than simply being an abstract idea. It includes flows of data that might not be linked to any specific service and have multiple flows, even across borders. The estimates for global bandwidth use reflect an annual growth rate of around 40% between the years 2009 and 2013 (as per Tele Geography, 2015). Studies also show that the data transfers were around 45-times larger in the year 2014 than in 2005.
API (Application Programming Interface) started to appear in year 2000 and became in the last few years more known and heard, but before we dig more in our main subject, let us clear few things:
Who we are is the result of the sheer number of habits we form over the years. Logistics form a crucial part of our daily life, and under the subject, every freight delivery requires a lot of paperwork. These include the documentation of all the aspects that form the core functionality of the delivery. Now, the most important piece of paperwork associated with the delivery of freight is the Bill of Lading (BOL).
On 29th of June 2021, the G7 members voted to approve a new law - Uniform Rules for Digital Trade Transactions (URDT) Version 1.0, which is to be implemented by the 1st of October 2021. Uniform Rules for Digital Trade Transactions (URDT) is a game-changing law that lays down a high-level framework outlining obligations, rules, and standards for the digitization of trade finance. This has been welcomed as a great step forward in the trade digitization process towards complete digitization of global trade.
The ongoing digitization is transforming the business environment in a variety of different industries. As a result, business manufacturers are gaining more competitive advantages by implementing these emerging technologies and new digital solutions. While the digital revolution has changed most industries, its influence on the forestry trade has been comparatively limited.
After careful consideration and in light of the ongoing trial, Egypt’s Ministry of finance made the decision to postpone the mandatory application of the ACI system till October 1st 2021. The implementation date was previously scheduled for the 1st of July 2021, but it was decided to extend the trial period till the end of September.
The global economy is constantly changing and so is the way of managing businesses. In the time of digital transformation, which one could argue that we are in now, it is a key factor for companies to use state-of-the-art solutions in order to stay competitive. In the recent years many different supply chain SaaS has appeared, and it is very logical since supply chain management (SCM) is a very wide concept in which many parts are typically managed very primitively.
The supply chain industry is a complicated, multi-faceted process that entails everything starting from warehouse activities to logistics. In today’s supply chain management process, business functions require more flexible processes, innovative provisioning systems to scale their operations that necessitate real-time information and intelligence.
Digital procurement will automate many repetitive tasks in order to cut costs and increase efficiency in the near future. Sourcing strategies and many high-level decisions will be increasingly based on analysis of data that is conducted by artificial intelligence. A common belief is that operational jobs will suffer more than jobs of a strategic nature as machines and software get smarter, but there is no consensus on that in the scientific community and many factors are actually pointing to the contrary.
Rapid digitization is causing tectonic shifts in the supply chain sector across industries. These advancements are aimed at transforming the way supply chains function and deliver value. In accordance with new digital procurement strategies, the new Egyptian customs law - Advance Cargo Information declaration is becoming mandatory for all Egyptian import shipments.
Egyptian Ministry of Finance (Customs Authority) activate article 39 of customs law 207 of 2020 and issue decree 38 of 2021. Which requires a unique customs registration number (Advanced Cargo Information Declaration (ACI) for each incoming shipment imported into Egypt that must be included on all shipping documents.
As with most global supply chains, the timber industry is in a perennial search for end-to-end visibility - an arduous objective considering the market fragmentation and the data silos that remain unused across the value chain. With stakeholders drawing wafer-thin profit margins from timber operations, visibility into the value chain becomes crucial, as this could help them with demand forecasting and in optimizing sourcing patterns.
A customer orders an item from a seller who might be sitting across the world; the item then travels from its place of production (the seller) via a transit mode (shipping) to reach its destination (the customer). This complete process is what makes up the term supply-chain. The word “chain” is deliberately used as a part of the term to denote the several steps (or the chain of processes) involved to “supply” products or goods from the seller to the customer.
After the “pandemic”, digitalisation is probably the most talked about aspect of the shipping industry, possibly only eclipsed by the “exorbitant container shipping rates” in the short term.
Incoterms are the international rules that determine the responsibilities, costs and risks between the seller and the buyer. They are universal rules that bring predictability to the business. It’s important to keep in mind that this is not the full sales contract, only part of it incorporated into the contract.
Supply chain management (SCM) is concerned with the coordination and management of organizations within a supply chain. Logistics is the part of SCM that manages the flows of goods and information within the organizations’ direct operations sphere.
Manufacturing industries have started to adopt circular economy framework as an alternative to a traditional linear economy in which resources are made, used and then disposed of.
RFID technology has been created as far ago as 1973, however it has only recently gained widespread commercial popularity reaching a market value of over $10 billion and is believed to become ubiquitous in the next decade. At its core, RFID is a data collection technology that can scan multiple sources at once in an instant.
In 2019 Centersource has completed a survey amongst a number of companies that collectively export, transport or import over nine million cubic meters of lumber materials annually. We have asked these companies if they were satisfied with the work tools currently available to them. As a result, over 90% have replied with a definitive “No”.
If you are a supply chain professional you probably already know this: Building analytics solutions that produce actual value is usually a very complex endeavor which requires a lot of thought, time and effort.
Because of coronavirus, we now face the biggest challenge in living memory to business continuity and coordination. This is a challenge for any organization, but it may be particularly challenging for industries with global supply-chains and large partner networks. So, when everybody across the supply-chains works remotely - how can you coordinate it?
My father started his company in the forestry industry exactly forty-five years ago. Back then typewriters, mail, calculators and telex (which was later replaced by fax) were the main tools required to conduct business.
Companies are only as proactive, effective and organised as the employees they have and the tools available to them. Having worked in the industry for almost a decade and having worked globally with many companies of all sizes, including the largest, I noticed that they all share the exact same problems and suboptimal processes.
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