CargoSmart Limited, a Software as a Service (SaaS) global logistics solutions provider, announced the availability of Shipment Folder, a new documentation workflow management solution. Shipment Folder helps shippers, consignees, and logistics service providers streamline document management processes and comply with international trade regulations.
The new product provides easy and centralized access to any shipment-related document online, such as packing lists, shipping orders, commercial invoices, purchase orders, and security filings. It allows users to electronically store and exchange their documents among shipping parties to help keep cargo moving through the supply chain and delivered on time.
Shipment Folder is based on CargoSmart’s new, services-oriented architecture (SOA). The new architecture allows CargoSmart to deliver highly customized features, over the Internet, in a cloud computing environment to customers, the company says. Customers can monitor and automate their document workflow by setting parameters for when to expect documents and updates from multiple parties.
“Shipment Folder helps customers by allowing them to focus on the exceptions to their document workflow, share documents more efficiently throughout the supply chain, and at the same time minimize courier and hard-copy documentation storage costs,” said Joe O’Brien, managing director of CargoSmart North America.
Using Shipment Folder’s powerful rules and assignments features will help importers comply with trade regulations, including the recently published U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Final Interim Rule on the Importer Security Filing (ISF), also known as 10+2, the company says. Effective in January 2009, importers are responsible for submitting eight data elements 24 hours before their cargo is loaded on board at the foreign port of lading and two additional data elements 24 hours before their cargo arrives at the U.S. port of arrival.
CargoSmart is currently working with customers to explore further ways they can use Shipment Folder to improve their business processes. Customers are facing increasing documentation requirements such as the U.S. Census Bureau’s mandatory electronic documentation filing through the Automated Export System (AES) and the China 24-Hour Advanced Manifest Rule.
