Implementing Export Compliance in Oracle

May 30th, 2008 |   Send this article to a friend!

In the United States there are numerous international embargo laws in place that restrict U.S. based corporations from selling to countries that are deemed a threat by the government. Cuba, Iran, and North Korea are all examples of countries which no one in the U.S. can conduct business with. These laws can change often depending on the political atmosphere or whoever happens to be in office, making it difficult for organizations who sell or distribute products globally to not only adhere to the laws, but to also adapt their audit procedures when a change to policy occurs.

For corporations which conduct sales in the U.S. and in other locations across the world, the complexity increases because every country has their own set of embargo laws. For example, a U.S. based company cannot sell to an Iranian company because of U.S. regulation, but on the other hand, if the same organization has a location or distribution warehouse in France, their French location could sell to that same Iranian customer. Granted, this situation is also dependent on the citizenship of the individual conducting the sale - an employee sitting at a desk in France can’t make the same sale to Iran if they hold U.S. citizenship.

By now I think you get the point - keeping track and enforcing export compliance procedures can be quite complex. If your business operates an international sales organization and has difficulty enforcing and adapting to the ever changing embargo regulations at a global level, then the Oracle Export Compliance module, in conjunction with Kewill export compliance screening, can provide just the tools you need to ensure your sales organization remains compliant.

A Brief Look at the Technology

Out of the box, Oracle provides a workflow process in Order Management that establishes an XML based connection to a selected 3^rd party compliance screening service. Kewill, a commonly used screening service in the Oracle community, maintains an elaborate database of the latest export compliance regulations. Upon entering and booking a sales order, Oracle sends various information about the sale order transaction to Kewill, who then accepts and evaluates the sale based on the most current and up-to-date export compliance laws.

Once Kewill determines whether or not the sale is compliant, the results are sent back to Oracle Order Management. If the result is found to violate export compliance laws, the sales order goes on export compliance violation hold and awaits review by an individual in the organization who is given the property authority to either process the order or cancel the sale.

Additionally screening can be performed during the pick release and shipment confirmation processes to ensure that changes that are made to a sales order after booking are also captured and screened prior to sending the product out the door.

The technology around the communication between Oracle and Kewill services is fairly straightforward, but the actual screening performed by Kewill can be quite complex. As I mentioned earlier, international embargo laws vary country, so to deem a transaction compliant there are many pieces of information to consider. What country is the customer located? Do the billing and shipping locations for the customer differ? Or is the billing customer entirely different than the shipping customer?

What about your facilities - is the location of your shipping warehouse different than the location from where the order is being processed? Does the citizenship of the individual entering the transaction qualify to make the sale?

As you can see, the situation can get quite complex. How these questions are answered determines the set of export compliance laws that need to be evaluated. Lucky for you, Oracle Export Compliance and Kewill takes care of this complexity for you.

For more information regarding the Oracle Export Compliance product visit http://www.oracle.com/products/export/index.html.

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Mr. Thompson is a Senior Oracle Applications Consultant with Lexerd Group Consulting. Visit www.LexerdGroup.com to find out more about our firm.

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Entry Filed under: Order Management, Technical, Order to Cash