12 Dec
Digital transformation has been the core mandate for businesses across industries for the past decade. And several businesses are getting their tedious manual processes digitised to optimise operations, save costs, and leverage resources for more value-added, strategic tasks.
The export sector, with its huge stack of documents that need to be processed per shipment, is also in dire need of a similar transformation. Export documentation should be made faster and easier, and choosing the right cloud-based export documentation software might just be your way out. Here’s why:
The Need For a Cloud-Based Export Documentation Software
A typical export shipment documentation includes 200 data elements, 30 of which need to be repeated 30 times in various documents, and 60-70% of data are retyped at least 30 times. Imagine the kind of manual work that must require!
Coupled with that, you also have to keep track of all documents, permits, and approvals, along with properly filling them out across different portals. And with such a huge volume of documents involved, it’s quite difficult to find anything easily.
All of this makes the manual process documentation:
- – Time taking and too complex to handle
- – Error-prone
- – Difficult to track
And it leads to significant overspending on export documentation and procedure!
The solution? Shifting from manual to digital processes, using a cloud-based export documentation software.
How to Choose a Cloud-Based Export Management Software?
You realise the importance of software, but don’t know why choosing the right one is important. Assume that you pick software and go ahead with its implementation, only to realise that it doesn’t have the features you need, or that its onboarding is confusing. What do you do now? You are either stuck with software that doesn’t really work for you or have to spend more time and resources in reversing the entire implementation process.
To ensure this doesn’t happen, it’s prudent to go for the right software from the very beginning.
Here are three steps to evaluate and choose the right one for you:
Define Your Needs
The first step to deciding on export documentation software is to understand why you need it.
- What processes do you want to automate?
- What is your set of expected features and functionalities?
- What level of data security, and technical support are you looking for from the software team?
These are only a few of the many requirements you may have. And looking at your current export documentation process will define exactly in what ways you want to improve it. This will give you a set of requirements against which you can compare the features and functionalities of the different cloud-based export management software that you are evaluating.
Prepare Your Evaluation Checklist
So you have your list of requirements ready, the next step is to create a checklist of sorts to quickly and efficiently evaluate the different software tools.
These are the criteria you should evaluate the different available software options on:
- – Accuracy and efficiency in managing the entire documentation process
- – Ability to manage third-party organizations, liaising, obtaining certificates, and sending documentation for smooth processing
- – Implementation of the software, and whether it works seamlessly against your IT infrastructure
- – Reporting and analysis for further process improvements
- – Compliance with export regulations, and data security
- – Level of technical assistance offered by your vendor, and the cost of support
Select the Software of Your Choice
In this final stage, you need to experience each alternative software hands-on to ensure they meet your requirements. It can include a demo or a trial of 15-30 days of the software. And based on that, you can select the software that best fits your needs.
Adopting cloud-based software for export documentation is a key business investment and could be crucial to optimizing operations and increasing profit margins. So once you have decided to make the switch, it is only prudent that you invest in the right tool for export management, one that meets your needs and reduces your cost of operations
For a detailed look into the importance of the right cloud-based export management software, and how to make an informed choice, take a look at our software buying guide.
