BorderWise features legal and technical information, tariff-classification tools and reference publications
WiseTech Global is about to launch a new border compliance engine, BorderWise, for customs brokers, legal and other trade professionals.
BorderWise combines border compliance data, law and regulation, and advanced search functionality “to help users effectively minimise customs duty and mitigate the risks associated with customs non-compliance for themselves and their customers”, the company states.
The new system is slated for a December 1 release in Australia, with plans to expand across other countries in the near future.
“Growing complexity in world trade continues to put pressure on the supply chain, and efficient border compliance is critical,” WiseTech Global CEO Richard White says.
“We are creating the data sets and building powerful new technologies to address productivity, costs and risk mitigation in customs compliance.”
BorderWise features integrated suite of legal books, technical documents, tariff-classification tools and reference information.
It provides real-time updates and alerts on legislation, publications and notices from regulatory bodies.
BorderWise contains the “full breadth of customs publications from the World Customs Organization Harmonized System Explanatory Notes and the principles of valuation, to ratified treaties and local legislation”, the company states.
Industry expert, director of Sue Danks Tariff Consulting and the current vice chair of Customs Brokers and Forwarders Council of Australia (CBFCA), Sue Danks, has assisted in the development of the new system.
“With increasing challenges in addressing border regulation, ensuring compliance is fraught with risk,” Danks says.
“Requirements keep changing as new legislation and policy changes keep rolling out, while data can be convoluted, difficult to interpret and hard to access efficiently.
“On top of that, not all customs authorities agree on the interpretation or classification of certain goods, and those opinions change, often with little or no notice to industry.
“Most countries have numerous, sometime hundreds, of items of customs legislation or policy documentation, and therefore managing customs compliance is a growing and evolving challenge for customs brokers and self-reporting importers, especially in an environment where serious penalties are issued for non-compliance or duty short-payments.
“In my opinion, Australian customs brokers are highly trained and skilled, but in a time of increased regulatory inspections and a penalty regime we all need all the assistance we can to provide advice that is timely and accurate. BorderWise provides that assistance.
“It is designed to be a powerful border compliance engine that pulls the information together and through advanced guided search, helps present the right information to users in a single window.”
WiseTech says the system was developed to help customs brokers work more effectively with their customers in advance of border transactions to maximise compliance, assist with forecasting, reduce risk, and ensure that no more than the duty legally due is paid.
“In addition to helping reduce compliance risk, fines, penalties and costs, BorderWise can help customs and border protection agencies mitigate safety and security risks arising from the movement of goods through their borders,” it states.
The company states that the compliance engine will be enhanced further “with natural language processing and machine learning, where in addition to the presented search results, further due diligence and risk mitigations and additional relevant customs and compliance information will be presented”.
“This will be a significant help to customs brokers needing to understand specific and often complex local legislative compliance needs,” WiseTech Global innovation and technology manager Zubin Appoo says.
“We will also be enhancing BorderWise to contain full audit trail capabilities for tariff classifications to demonstrate due diligence by allowing brokers to electronically and seamlessly have importers signoff on the compliance documentation before the goods are entered for Customs.
“This feature is designed to increase transparency and help further mitigate and minimise non-compliance and risk for customs brokers.”
BorderWise can be accessed via web or desktop application.
Fully integrated into CargoWise One, BorderWise can be used by existing CargoWise One customers to significantly enhance their productivity.
BorderWise is also available to industry professionals in Australia as a standalone application available via a monthly on demand license.
“In designing and building BorderWise we have brought together huge sets of data including law, regulation and trade data that will drive our machine learning and natural language processing techniques,” WiseTech Global senior customs tariff product manager Christine Kontos says.
“This will further enhance BorderWise and customs processing so customs brokers, self-reporters and other international trade professionals can find critical information more quickly, even when the exact phrase or technical term is not found.
“This will make a significant impact on customs compliance productivity and effectiveness.”
The compliance system is expected to be released in the United States, Canada, Mexico, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa and the United Kingdom by the end of this year.
There are plans to expand the reach of BorderWise to Brazil, China, Germany, Italy and Taiwan next year.