Descartes starts Global Customs Filing working group

Descartes starts Global Customs Filing working group    Descartes Systems Group has formed a Global Customs Filing working group with its customers to help them better interpret, understand and prepare for various existing and upcoming country-specific and international customs filing mandates across all transport modes.
   The company announced the working group on Monday during the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals conference in Chicago.
   Descartes said its working groups are formed by “users with common interests to standardize business processes and develop best practices.”
   The Global Customs Filing working group includes members of Descartes’ freight forwarder, carrier and shipper customer base.
   “This group, along with the customs brokerage community, has government-mandated responsibility for security around cross-border shipments, and are relied upon by their customers to transmit filings to ensure supply chain integrity,” the company said.
   The Global Customs Filing group will help Descartes to advance its Global Filing Portal initiative. This initiative focuses on systems program designs to meet compliance requirements that are “commercially viable, scale a variety of IT and operational environments and provide an effective end-user experience,” Descartes said.
   The working group’s other objectives include:
   ' Providing input on the interpretation and understanding of the filing mandates ruling and its impact on industry.
   ' Providing insight on optimal data and multiparty workflow options between the importer/exporter, forwarder, broker, carrier, other agents and governments worldwide.
   ' Participating in testing of new Descartes offerings.
   ' Reviewing and guiding Descartes’ near-, mid-, and long-term product development priorities.
   ' Provide guidance on future complementary services to assist in further streamlining international trade.
   “More than 30 countries have security manifest system initiatives that have or are scheduled to become effective between 2008 and 2011,” said Jonathan Wasserman, senior vice president of global trade and compliance solutions for Descartes, in a statement. “We believe that organizations around the world need to work together to determine how to manage and simplify these multiparty, multicountry processes and strive to make them as standardized and efficient as possible.”