Customs compliance specialist launches consulting firm

Trade Force Multiplier, a new company created by well-known international trade specialist Cynthia Allen, aims to help brokers, importers and exporters with automation and business process improvements.    Cynthia Allen, a well-known international trade specialist with expertise in compliance issues and the inner workings of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, is founding a consulting firm called Trade Force Multiplier.
   The company will offer a range of services for customs brokers, as well as importers and exporters, with a special focus on helping companies properly automate trade functions to reduce costs and improve service, according to Allen.
   After her position as vice president and head of customs brokerage for DHL Global Forwarding USA was eliminated earlier this year as part of a global restructuring, Allen said she decided to go into business herself because there was so much interest in compliance services.
   Allen currently sits on the Department of Homeland Security’s Commercial Operations Advisory Committee (COAC), which is helping CBP establish and implement security and trade enforcement policies in ways that minimize burdens on industry. Prior to joining DHL in 2012, Allen spent two years as head of the ACE Business Office at CBP.
   The Automated Commercial Environment, or ACE, is the new commercial trade processing system that has been under development for more than a dozen years. It automates the most commonly used Customs forms as well as follow-up communications and responses between the agency and international cargo shippers. It also will serve as the backbone for exchanging information with other government agencies that regulate products made, or being sold, overseas. The International Trade Data System is designed to streamline cargo release decisions so that companies only submit information once through a single channel and it is routed to the appropriate decision-making agencies.
   All importers and their agents next year will be required to electronically transmit to ACE all cargo release filings and associated entry summaries, including documents required by other agencies.
   Allen is among a handful of officials at the time who were credited with turning around the troubled IT project. Plagued by cost overruns, mission creep and mismanagement, ACE has cost the government more than $3.1 billion to build so far.
   Allen, who previously served as director of the National Customs Brokers and Forwarders Association of America’s Educational Institute, brought private sector approaches to the ACE job, helping to better define system requirements for government and commercial users. Between 2006 and 2008, Allen was vice president and director of compliance for Argents Air Express, and for the six prior years was director of U.S. operations for freight forwarder Wilson International.
   The new ACE team was able to restructure the ACE project development and contain costs, and moved to a new methodology of incremental software rollouts so bugs can be corrected instead of infrequently releasing large chunks of programming. CBP is now receiving praise from industry for addressing many of its needs and many more entries are now being voluntarily filed through ACE.
   In an interview, Allen said she will assist customs brokers and importers implement ACE, which requires updating their software systems to interface with CBP’s new system.
   A key part of that transition for companies is identifying what software is best suited for their specific operations. Oftentimes, importers and brokers choose trade management and compliance software and then spend large amounts of money customizing it, she said.
   “Many companies are not good at understanding their own strengths and weaknesses in their business processes and process flows, and are not very good at evaluating software from a third-party perspective,” said Allen. “I can evaluate what they good at, where their challenges are, what they could benefit from and find a software package that best meets their needs.”
   Trade Force Multiplier will also offer advice to the software vendor community to help give it a more cohesive voice in dealing with CBP and other agencies that traditionally listen more closely to actual filers. Allen said her background in industry and government gives her the ability to serve as neutral third party in helping set the government’s software specifications.
   Allen also plans to offer a training resource for desk-level employees at customs brokerage firms, importers, exporters and freight forwarders so that supervisors can be freed from the time consuming task of constantly answering basic questions such as how to arrive at the value on a customs entry, what are anti-dumping duties, what trade agreements can be applied to an entry, and what licensing or boycott restrictions exist for an export.
   The training tool will be in the form of three-to-five minute instructional video vignettes and would be offered on a pay-by-click basis or as a package.
   Allen said he hopes to have a video library available by the end of the year and then expand it. She also plans to offer some analytics by identifying which videos are used the most to help a company determine where it needs to focus more training.
   Trade Force Multiplier is in the process of trying to line up some outside financing.
   “This has taken off a lot quicker than I thought so a lot of details still being negotiated and worked out. But I’m excited to start the next chapter,” Allen said.