Vigilant adds to global trade compliance managed services capability

Trade compliance IT systems supplier Vigilant Global Trade Services has begun using Descartes CustomsInfo and Descartes MK Denied Party Screening to help its clients comply with rapidly changing regulations.
Compliance systems appear increasingly valuable in today’s world of fast-changing international trade regimes and the increasing numbers of parties with whom trade is proscribed.
“Vigilant helps clients transform reactive and unsupported compliance programs into proactive, efficient and strategic global trade compliance programs,” said Derek Abramovitch, Ohio, US-based Vigilant’s chief relationship officer.
“Accurate and efficient worldwide product classifications and screening of business partners and transactions for restricted or sanctioned parties are fundamental building blocks of successful global trade compliance programs,” he continued.
“Descartes provides us the content and technology tools to automate these processes so that we can focus on applying our domain expertise in value-added areas to help our clients improve operational efficiencies, minimize disruptions to their supply chain, mitigate risk and find opportunities to reduce compliance related costs.”
Companies must adapt to a wide range of evolving free trade agreements (FTAs) and complex preferential trade systems, respond to increasing numbers of Customs and border guard requests for information, and stay up to date with changes to country- and industry-specific regulations, as well as regularly updated lists of sanctioned parties.
Joely Callaway, vice president, product management, Customs content at Descartes, observed: “Our cloud-based content solutions help organizations work smarter by uniting compliance professionals and the systems they use with the trade data they need to streamline international commerce.”