Amber Road had a blast attending the Massachusetts Export Center's Export Expo last week in Boston! Several panels discussed hot topics in export compliance, global trade credit risk, export control reform, and more.

NORTH POLE, December 18, 2013 – North Pole Industries, a leading global provider of toys for good little girls and boys, has implemented Amber Road’s Global Trade Management suite in its worldwide distribution network.

North Pole Industries (NPI) needed to establish transparency, reliability, and control in its global supply chain, and selected Amber Road’s Supply Chain Visibility solution to provide real-time visibility into the status of wish lists, chimney accessibility, and toy manufacturing. After a successful implementation, NPI was able to track the location of toys’ raw materials on their way to the North Pole, as well as the delivery status of the final products.

Last Saturday, the World Trade Organization reached a historic agreement on its very first global “trade facilitation” deal, disproving the notion that small and large countries can never agree on new trade rules.

The 159-member organization committed to expedite shipments, streamline clearance processes and increase transparency at the conclusion of the Doha round of international trade talks. But the deal has hit several roadblocks in its long history since Doha began in 2001. Each time that discussions nearly collapsed, trade officials further stripped down the agenda, and Cuba almost derailed the entire project when they threatened to reject any agreement that failed to end the US’s embargo on their country. Roberto Azevedo took over as Director-General in September, and succeeded in keeping all parties at the table until they could reach a conclusion.

Global trade and the associated supply chain are subject to ever-increasing international regulations and legislation. Global Trade Management reduces the risk of liability, fines and delays at international borders, and conducting a sourcing and distribution analysis presents possibilities for companies to minimize import duties, taxes and surcharges.

American Shipper’s Global Transportation Management Benchmark Study: Climbing the Visibility Sophistication Ladder, found that successful shippers and their service partners are investing in supply chain visibility to deal with their growing and complex supply chains. In fact, 66% of shippers and 75% of forwarders were able to quantify an ROI from their visibility investment!

Last week in Geneva, a deal was struck between Iran and six world powers, including the U.S. and the European Union, to relax global trade restrictions on cars, petrochemicals, aviation parts, gold, and insurance for oil cargoes. Additionally, Iran will be permitted to continue exporting oil at current levels instead of forcing further reductions.

The idea of industry segmentation argues that companies need to execute separate strategies for commodities and newer, innovative goods – the demand structures certainly differ. Supply chain segmentation is no different, and SCM World delves into this critical, but underutilized, business process in their brand new report, “Supply Chain Segmentation: The Key to Future Profitability.”

Supply chain objectives are no longer only tied to cost reduction. Companies are starting to take advantage of their supply chains to increase revenues and offer differentiated services to improve the customer experience. Supply chain segmentation provides perhaps the best opportunity to achieve all those objectives, but many companies still try to funnel all needs through one supply chain strategy.