CASE STUDY

Global Food Manufacturer Achieves Significant

Duty Savings and Reduces Supply Chain Costs
The Company
This global food manufacturer and distributor is one of the worlds largest
companies with operations in more than 100 countries. As a leading
consumer products company with revenues exceeding $10 billion annually,
they are continually focused on product innovation by rapidly addressing
evolving food trends and delivering foods that meet consumers needs.
Today, this company manufactures and distributes some of the most
recognizable food brands and continues to add to their product line up,
with fifty new products planned for release in 2015.
Their US and international operations include manufacturing facilities,
distribution operations and company-operated retail shops. The company
currently exports to over 70 countries and, like many global companies, has
been focused on achieving sustainable growth from established international
markets while also expanding in emerging markets.

The Challenge
The company realized their global trade processes required a transformation
due to an over reliance on manually intensive processes. With a high volume
of imported products and the resulting documentation requirements, it was
imperative to streamline manual, error-prone processes. This environment
resulted in inefficient processes with no consistent approach across the
organization and a tremendous amount of duplicate efforts. In certain
situations, the company underpaid or overpaid duties, resulting in manual
efforts to correct the inaccurate duty payments.
With the increasing complexity of managing their imports and exports, the
company concluded that they could not continue to address global trade
operations by simply devoting more and more people to the department.
They required a more efficient approach to address the increasing
complexities of global trade import and export regulations. They also
identified the negative impact shipment delays were having on supply chain
cycle times due to documentation errors and other international shipping
delays.
This consumer goods company realized they had an opportunity to seize
increased duty savings by creating a more efficient free trade agreement
(FTA) process that would reduce supply chain costs. In the case of agreement
identification and supplier solicitation, their processes relied on inefficient
manual efforts resulting in increased risks of not passing potential audits.

The Benefits
$40 million in annual duty
savings by expanding free trade
agreements from 1 program to
over 6
Certain product duties were
reduced to $0
Enhanced import and export
compliance
Increased visibility to
missing documents resulted
in improved supply chain
reliability
Increased visibility to items
with duty rates
Increased customs labor
productivity (not chasing
documents) to drive metrics,
reliability and future staffing
efficiencies
Increased compliance with
broker documents improved
the process to reclaim duties
Increased broker efficiency
due to capturing basic rules
or norms

The Solution
The company chose to implement Amber Roads Import, Export and Duty Management solutions using a phased
implementation methodology. These solutions enabled their global trade team to centralize processes and streamline
free trade agreement qualification. Free trade agreement capabilities were deployed in May 2011, export management
capabilities were deployed in October 2012 and import management capabilities in April 2013. The implementation team
consisted of free trade agreement experts that understood the complex qualification and solicitation processes, data
analysts that understood how the BOM and part data was managed in the ERP system, IT resources that built the interfaces
from the ERP system to the FTA solution, and global trade expertise from Amber Road. A dedicated project manager
coordinated the project and managed scope, timeline, and cost.
The importance of people, processes and technology for the success of this project has been fully addressed and has an
ongoing impact on the supply chain organization. In the case of technology, the solution has ensured system automation
for many of the global trade transactions previously managed manually. Also, the project team now has the ability to
expand the project globally by leveraging leading technology standards. Global trade processes have been improved by
enhancing import and export controls to ensure valid admissibility along with improved audit requirements to comply with
various government regulatory environments. From a people and organizational view, a Compliance Center of Excellence
was instituted to better meet increasingly complex import and export regulations around the globe.

The Results
Providing a positive and lasting impact to their supply chain performance has provided profound satisfaction to the project
team. The company has been able to significantly reduce duty payments, reduce inventory levels and improve global trade
processes. For many companies, the burden of managing free trade agreements is seen as not worth the effort. In this
case, a comprehensive approach that involved leading global trade technology, like Amber Roads solutions, had a positive
impact on global supply chain performance and cost reduction.
In the case of free trade agreements, an organization must decide which FTAs apply and then query their suppliers for
product origin information according to the rules set by the FTA. Amber Road provided an automated solution with the
ability to better identify applicable FTAs, execute supplier solicitation campaigns and garner cost savings.
The company has improved collaboration with suppliers and partners like their Customs brokers. This has resulted in
reducing error rates that negatively impacted cycle times. With improved cycle times and accuracy, the company has
enhanced product availability for their customers. The Customs team can also more easily analyze the supplier base
to determine where to devote efforts in achieving duty savings from preferential trade programs. With improved FTA
identification, this project has delivered significant duty savings in excess of $40 million on an annual basis.
Amber Roads solutions have allowed the company to centralize and automate their global trade processes, ensuring an
efficient deployment to all global operations. This has resulted in improving the business process, achieving continuity
across their global trade teams and reducing global supply chain risks.

About Amber Road

Amber Roads (NYSE: AMBR) mission is to dramatically change the way companies conduct global trade. As a leading
provider of cloud based global trade management (GTM) solutions, we automate import and export processes to enable
goods to flow across international borders in the most efficient, compliant and profitable way. Our solution combines
enterprise-class software, trade content sourced from government agencies and transportation providers in 145 countries,
and a global supply chain network connecting our customers with their trading partners, including suppliers, freight
forwarders, customs brokers and transportation carriers. We deliver our GTM solution using a Software-as-a-Service
(SaaS) model and leverage a highly flexible technology framework to quickly and efficiently meet our customers unique
requirements around the world.

One Meadowlands Plaza East Rutherford, NJ 07073 (T) 201 935 8588 (F) 201 935 5187 www.AmberRoad.com Solutions@AmberRoad.com
2015 Amber Road, Inc. All rights reserved.