SAP GTS from the cloud: legal certainty in foreign trade

There is no question that Brexit is not the only factor making foreign trade relations increasingly complex. The demands on companies are constantly increasing. Those who export must guarantee that they implement trade and customs regulations in a timely manner and that they act in a legally secure manner at all times.

Otherwise, he risks not being able to procure or deliver products on time. In the area of export control, errors can even quickly turn into criminal proceedings.

In addition, with digitization, companies want to make their customs and foreign trade processes as lean as possible, if not completely automated.

It is therefore clear that process security in the exchange of goods - and not just with the UK, of course - can be achieved with a digital customs and foreign trade system alone.

The SAP Global Trade Services (SAP GTS) solution, for example, has established itself. Since 2000, companies have been able to use it to accelerate the customs clearance of their imports and exports and avoid violations of trade regulations and the associated penalties.

With the system, they fulfill all compliance requirements for import and export. For example, they automate the sanctions list check, embargo control or optimally exploit the benefits of preferential trade agreements and tariff savings.

What, nevertheless, prevents many companies from relying on such proven technology support? In one of our studies, 45 percent of the CFOs surveyed cited budget pressure as a major cause.

Companies shy away from high capital expenditures (CapEX) for digital systems. The good news is that such central platform solutions with their full range of functions can now also be used easily and more cost-effectively from the cloud.

Companies can therefore replace capital expenditure with operating expenditure (OpEX). The savings potential is up to 50 percent. Thanks to its scalability, the cloud solution is also suitable for all company sizes.

For this purpose, SAP partners operate SAP GTS in their data centers and then connect the solution to their customers' SAP upstream systems, i.e. SAP ECC, S/4 Hana or CRM, via a secure VPN tunnel.

There is an automated exchange of data between their systems. Even if more and more companies switch to S/4 now, SAP GTS would not become obsolete. For the foreseeable future, the S/4 Hana International Trade module will not pose any serious competition to the SAP GTS variant.

For the time being, it is at best a customs-light version with its slimmed-down functionalities. Currently, only a few service providers offer customs and foreign trade systems from the cloud. Companies should pay close attention to the following points when choosing their SAP partner:

Can your potential solution partner offer a holistic service from a single source? In other words, can they offer you a complete package - from strategic consulting and development to operation of the system in your operational units?

Does your service provider not only have IT expertise, but is also fit in legal issues? Make sure that your service provider's experts can demonstrate experience in compliance, management, customs management, risk management (preference processing), electronic compliance reporting (ECR) and customs.

If all these points apply, then you still need to evaluate whether the solution provider can also support you in your day-to-day business. For example, whenever you need expert customs advice as quickly as possible? He should definitely offer a help desk that responds to your questions in a reasonable time.

What about flexibility? Does the service provider offer the solution only as software as a service at a fixed monthly price or also as a usage-based on-demand variant?

Those who observe these points will be able to implement trade and customs regulations in a timely manner in the future and do business in a legally secure manner.