After successfully launching ONESOURCE Global Trade solution in various countries, Thomson Reuters has recently introduced it to the Indian market as well. Taneli Ruda, Senior Vice President and Managing Director, Global Trade Management, Tax & Accounting business and Prashant Pillai, Country Head, Tax and Accounting business, Thomson Reuters, South Asia share more details about the product’s features and its advantages to pharma firms, in an interaction with Usha Sharma
Thomson Reuters recently launched ONESOURCE in India. What is the USP of the product and how has its performance been in the Indian market?
Taneli Ruda: Thomson Reuters ONESOURCE global trade is the world’s first truly global trade automation and management solution. We recently launched the product in India to help corporations to efficiently manage trade compliance and supply chains in new and existing markets by combining trade information with technology tools. This solution enables multinational corporations to tie together key supply chain information to gain complete visibility of their end-to-end global trade process — reducing risk, maintaining regulatory compliance, enabling quick and accurate movement, and maximising profit.
Recently, the Ministry of Commerce, Government of India announced the New Foreign Trade Policy 2015-2020. It has several modifications/amendments. Does your product follow the recommendations? Based upon regulatory requirements, how quick can the solution be updated?
Prashant Pillai: The new Foreign Trade Policy aims to increase India’s share in world’s exports from two per cent to 3.5 per cent and achieve export revenue of $900 billion by 2020. The new policy has emphasised several measures for strong e-governance and ease of doing business, to name a few:
- Several initiatives in moving towards paperless environment,
- Self certification to avail preferential duty under FTA/ PTA
- Facility to upload documents in importer/ exporter profile
- Opening the DGFT website for interface, to start with Import Export Code (IEC) application as first project
All these measures require organisations to embrace technology. Organisations requires a solution to automate processes, which can also help them to be up-to-date with the changes in the regulatory environment.
Thomson Reuters ONESOURCE global trade has a dedicated team of trade experts to monitor the changes from a regulatory perspective and make necessary upgrades in the solution to help organisations be compliant. The solution combines work-flow tools with real-time information and analysis. ONESOURCE global trade solution offering is through the cloud, which enables us to update these changes promptly, without much of an effort required for the organisations to maintain. With work-flow management tools, the system facilitates information exchange between a corporation’s trade team and their logistics, compliance, finance, and strategic planning departments. It also connects trade teams with external partners responsible for managing a complex global supply chain, including customs brokers, freight forwarders, customs, shippers, regulators, and banks.
The product is already available in Brazil, Argentina and Mexico. What is it success story in those markets. What are your expectations from the Indian market?
Taneli Ruda: ONESOURCE global trade was initially launched in Brazil and expanded into other parts of Latin America (LATAM). We have more than 1,200 customers, including 350 multi-national corporations across various industries, including pharma. Over the past few months, we have held discussions with a large number of companies operating in India across a variety of industries, and it has become apparent that Indian companies sorely need a global trade automation system which is deeply localised for the Indian market. I believe our product can become an instrument to support Indian companies as they increasingly reach for global markets.
The company is targeting pharma companies who are working in line with the ‘Make in India’ campaign. What is the rationale behind this and how will it boost their plans?
Prashant Pillai: Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched ‘Make in India’, which focuses on making India a global manufacturing hub and we are a key player in the global pharma market. Pharma companies operate in a complex and stringent regulatory environment. In order to meet the compliance requirements, pharma companies that import and export have to maintain strong process controls to monitor the batches, licensing requirements for importing and exporting of certain items, planning and keeping track of all shipments to monitor the shelf life of drugs imported and exported to meet the needs, etc. With all the complexity in meeting the compliance needs, organisations are intended to make use of all export and import benefits provided by the government such as Chapter 3 schemes, duty drawback, export benefit licenses etc.
Thomson Reuters ONESOURCE global trade solution helps multinational companies cope with the increasing complexity of global trade and automate the trade compliance process by providing an end-to-end solution with global best practices and domestic capabilities. Of the list of our customers, we serve large multinational pharma companies in international trade space. The solution helps pharma companies manage compliance more efficiently and reduce the risk. This also results in increasing the bottom-line by making use of several benefits/incentives given by the government.
Which other markets have you have identified for the launch and why? By when will you be launching in these markets?
Taneli Ruda: The solution has been localised for Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Chile, China and India. In 2015, Thomson Reuters will launch ONESOURCE global trade in the US, Japan, Korea, Colombia, Peru, Singapore, and Thailand. We are already working on a large number of product localisations targeting additional Asian countries in 2016 as well as extending our offering to Europe, Middle East, and Africa. Our goal is to keep expanding our offering’s footprint to over 50 countries by the end of the decade so that globally operating companies can cover their entire supply chain with one automated solution worldwide.
Is it a cost-effective solution? And what additional features do you offer to your clients?
Taneli Ruda: Processes that slow down trade operations may result in lost time, work stoppages, and reduced margins. Additionally, if a good is misclassified or a declaration improperly passed to a broker, the result may be increased fees, taxes, and tariffs, or revoked export licenses. Making matters more difficult, many corporations rely upon disparate internal information programmes to manage the growing complexity of global trade. Thomson Reuters ONESOURCE global trade solution combines work-flow tools with real-time information and analysis. With work-flow management tools, the system facilitates information exchange between a corporation’s trade team and their logistics, compliance, finance, and strategic planning departments. It also connects trade teams with external partners responsible for managing a complex global supply chain, including customs brokers, freight forwarders, customs, shippers, regulators, and banks.
The product has functionalities such as landed cost analysis to analyse the cost of movement including compliance and logistics cost. It has several other functionalities such as Free Trade Agreement (FTA), export benefit license tracking, which helps organisations not just be compliant but also to improve the bottom line.
Do you customise the product based on clients’ requirements?
Taneli Ruda: Our product comes with a rich set of “out of the box” functionality, which reduces the need for customisations. Our solution is readily localised for each country – including India – with content and workflows that correspond to the local regulations, and is kept up-to-date by our trade experts. In addition, many customers choose to customise our solution for their specific processes and work-flows, including integration with legacy IT systems, creating custom reports, and supporting company-specific approval processes. Majority of such customisations can be done with lightweight configuration changes, which are a standard part of our implementation process. We also support deeper customisations for customers who need more comprehensive custom functionality.
What are the company’s corporate plans for the next two years?
Taneli Ruda: We are on track to launch localisations of our product in about 10 countries per year in the foreseeable future in an effort to serve our customers with the first truly global trade automation solution. We are also working on adding various new exciting capabilities to our suite, including automated HS classification engine, integration with indirect tax and transfer pricing workflows, and various machine learning and analytics features.
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