Case Studies GE Healthcare Remedies Complex Trade Compliance Operations

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	GE Healthcare Remedies Complex Trade Compliance Operations

GE Healthcare Remedies Complex Trade Compliance Operations

Technology Category	Analytics & Modeling - Predictive Analytics Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration Functional Applications - Enterprise Resource Planning Systems (ERP)
Applicable Industries	Healthcare & Hospitals
Applicable Functions	Logistics & Transportation
Use Cases	Supply Chain Visibility
Services	Data Science Services Software Design & Engineering Services System Integration
Challenge	GE Healthcare ships products from over 145 locations and faces an increasingly complex supply chain spanning multiple international borders, time zones, and regulatory environments. Over 40% of imports are destined for the United States, and 60%-70% of all global shipments are sent to intra-company locations for assembly and packaging. All other shipments are sent directly to customers, which are typically large hospital networks or resellers. With subsidiaries, suppliers, distributors, manufacturing facilities, carriers, brokers, and customers located worldwide, operations were fragmented and difficult to manage. Import and export compliance for the products being shipped is complicated. Many of the company’s goods fall under a dual-use classification — implying a potential for military use, requiring special licenses and documentation. Accuracy in all details is essential to determine proper export controls and the corresponding documentation to avoid potentially significant fines and cross-border delays. It became crucial for each business unit to automate its trade compliance processes — including product classification, restricted party screening, order-to-shipment compliance screening, and the generation of export documentation. Because of the range of borders crossed, it was equally important to ensure that any trade compliance software application used the most current regulatory data. Since the business units were operating on different enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, the company needed a solution that seamlessly integrated all these systems using a common framework. Read More
About Customer	GE Healthcare, a division of General Electric®, provides transformational medical technologies and devices to improve patient care. The company specializes in medical imaging, medical diagnostics, clinical systems, and patient monitoring systems. This broad range of products and services helps healthcare providers diagnose and treat cancer, heart disease, neurological diseases, and other conditions more accurately. The company has more than 50,000 employees committed to serving healthcare professionals and their patients in 160 countries worldwide. Read More
Solution	Following a competitive evaluation of the technology’s functionality and integration capabilities, e2open was selected to manage the global trade compliance process. The e2open platform creates a flexible environment for sharing information with supply chain partners and establishes a 'global transaction' for managing related party trade. This also enables users to view information on imports and exports simultaneously. Users can electronically send pre-entry instructions directly to brokers without waiting for the physical goods to arrive, thus expediting cycle times and improving overall efficiency. This ability to rapidly coordinate information was a key selection criterion. Most importantly, GE Healthcare needed a solution and partner that could grow with them, adapt to changes in business processes, perform systems upgrades, and quickly integrate new compliance regulations. E2open provides both scalability and flexibility as more business divisions are added to this global compliance initiative. The new system to automate trade compliance is composed of the following intelligent applications: e2open Export Management, e2open Import Management, and e2open Global Knowledge®. Read More Log in to view content
Contents

Technology Category

Analytics & Modeling - Predictive Analytics

Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration

Functional Applications - Enterprise Resource Planning Systems (ERP)

Applicable Industries

Healthcare & Hospitals

Applicable Functions

Logistics & Transportation

Use Cases

Supply Chain Visibility

Services

Data Science Services

Software Design & Engineering Services

System Integration

Challenge

GE Healthcare ships products from over 145 locations and faces an increasingly complex supply chain spanning multiple international borders, time zones, and regulatory environments. Over 40% of imports are destined for the United States, and 60%-70% of all global shipments are sent to intra-company locations for assembly and packaging. All other shipments are sent directly to customers, which are typically large hospital networks or resellers. With subsidiaries, suppliers, distributors, manufacturing facilities, carriers, brokers, and customers located worldwide, operations were fragmented and difficult to manage. Import and export compliance for the products being shipped is complicated. Many of the company’s goods fall under a dual-use classification — implying a potential for military use, requiring special licenses and documentation. Accuracy in all details is essential to determine proper export controls and the corresponding documentation to avoid potentially significant fines and cross-border delays. It became crucial for each business unit to automate its trade compliance processes — including product classification, restricted party screening, order-to-shipment compliance screening, and the generation of export documentation. Because of the range of borders crossed, it was equally important to ensure that any trade compliance software application used the most current regulatory data. Since the business units were operating on different enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, the company needed a solution that seamlessly integrated all these systems using a common framework.

About Customer

GE Healthcare, a division of General Electric®, provides transformational medical technologies and devices to improve patient care. The company specializes in medical imaging, medical diagnostics, clinical systems, and patient monitoring systems. This broad range of products and services helps healthcare providers diagnose and treat cancer, heart disease, neurological diseases, and other conditions more accurately. The company has more than 50,000 employees committed to serving healthcare professionals and their patients in 160 countries worldwide.

Solution

Following a competitive evaluation of the technology’s functionality and integration capabilities, e2open was selected to manage the global trade compliance process. The e2open platform creates a flexible environment for sharing information with supply chain partners and establishes a 'global transaction' for managing related party trade. This also enables users to view information on imports and exports simultaneously. Users can electronically send pre-entry instructions directly to brokers without waiting for the physical goods to arrive, thus expediting cycle times and improving overall efficiency. This ability to rapidly coordinate information was a key selection criterion. Most importantly, GE Healthcare needed a solution and partner that could grow with them, adapt to changes in business processes, perform systems upgrades, and quickly integrate new compliance regulations. E2open provides both scalability and flexibility as more business divisions are added to this global compliance initiative. The new system to automate trade compliance is composed of the following intelligent applications: e2open Export Management, e2open Import Management, and e2open Global Knowledge®.

Impact #1	By implementing the new system, the company established a unified and automated process across multiple business units around the world, reducing operating costs and increasing client and internal satisfaction. GE Healthcare now maintains accurate, up-to-date classifications. It remains compliant with country-specific export and import regulations, resulting in much lower potential compliance risk and notable cost savings on import broker fees.
Impact #2	GE Healthcare now has a central repository for compliance data that is directly accessible by all trade parties. It has dramatically improved its supply chain visibility, facilitating timely, accurate communication across its business units and with its trading partners. A key differentiator is that the platform provides internal teams with greater visibility into shipments, improving on-time delivery and internal satisfaction.
Impact #3	The company reduced the risks and costs associated with inaccuracies by configuring the system to perform validation of required attributes before shipping. Full export documentation for multiple business units accelerates the speed of shipping at their global sites. This provides a full audit trail for all transactions, trading partners, and product data and enables quick responses to both customs and internal audit requests. After automating the process, many compliance steps are processed in a parallel fashion, which provides greater flexibility and control when prioritizing shipments.

Impact #1

By implementing the new system, the company established a unified and automated process across multiple business units around the world, reducing operating costs and increasing client and internal satisfaction. GE Healthcare now maintains accurate, up-to-date classifications. It remains compliant with country-specific export and import regulations, resulting in much lower potential compliance risk and notable cost savings on import broker fees.

Impact #2

GE Healthcare now has a central repository for compliance data that is directly accessible by all trade parties. It has dramatically improved its supply chain visibility, facilitating timely, accurate communication across its business units and with its trading partners. A key differentiator is that the platform provides internal teams with greater visibility into shipments, improving on-time delivery and internal satisfaction.

Impact #3

The company reduced the risks and costs associated with inaccuracies by configuring the system to perform validation of required attributes before shipping. Full export documentation for multiple business units accelerates the speed of shipping at their global sites. This provides a full audit trail for all transactions, trading partners, and product data and enables quick responses to both customs and internal audit requests. After automating the process, many compliance steps are processed in a parallel fashion, which provides greater flexibility and control when prioritizing shipments.

Benefit #1	Reduced broker costs by 20%
Benefit #2	Improved compliance with country-specific regulations
Benefit #3	Minimized fines by improving licensing accuracy and efficiency

Benefit #1

Reduced broker costs by 20%

Benefit #2

Improved compliance with country-specific regulations

Benefit #3

Minimized fines by improving licensing accuracy and efficiency

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Overview

GE Healthcare Remedies Complex Trade Compliance Operations

Operational Impact

Quantitative Benefit