4 Integration with Other Solutions
Trade Management has a number of integration points with other solutions in order to receive data about the import progress and fees, and to manage payments to suppliers and other import partners.
Invoice Matching
Invoice Matching is a downstream dependency for Trade Management, in that it is used to create non-merchandising invoices for much of the activity related to importing. This occurs on confirmation of customs entries and on approving obligations.
External Partners
Trade Management automates the international import transaction data. Four components of Trade Management: Customs Entry, Harmonized Tariff Schedule, Letter of Credit, and Transportation have batch-processing modules that facilitate the flow of data between Trade Management and external applications and files.
Integration with Banks
The letter of credit functionality processes applications and amendments to banks, and uploads confirmations, drawdown notifications, and related information from banks using the internationally recognized standard format, SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications).
Integration with Customs Brokers and Agencies
The customs entry functionality supports extracting the details entered to send to customs brokers containing information on ordered items, bills of lading/airway bills, shipments, containers, licenses, visas, broker charges and missing documents.
Customs agencies also provide harmonized tariff schedule information that can be uploaded into Trade Management. The upload handles both the initial HTS information, as well as mid-year HTS updates that are supplied by import country governments. When updates are received, the effective dates are adjusted for the existing HTS records and the new set of HTS records are added. Files that can be imported from an import country's government include HTS chapters, HTS classifications, taxes, fees, other government agency (OCA) information, tariff treatments, and tariff treatment exclusions. Alternatively, this be loaded using a spreadsheet download/upload process. For more details on the spreadsheet download and upload for HTS data, see Oracle Retail Import Management Foundation Data User Guide.
Integration with Supply Chain Partners
As the merchandise moves your supplier's warehouse or factory to the discharge port at the import country, supply chain partners, such as freight forwarders or importers, will share information with you about the transportation. This can be uploaded into Trade Management, providing online visibility of the merchandise in the supply chain.
The files provided by the supply chain partners should be placed in the proper input directory, so that the batch program TRANUPLD can pick up the file and process the same. In case the files provided by the supply chain partners differ from the expected file format, custom program must be written to convert the data from the original file format to the required file format.
For more details on the integrations with external partners described in this chapter, see Chapter 19 of the Oracle Retail Merchandising Operations Guide, Volume 1.