The Export Compliance Guide allows companies to ensure that their exports of goods comply with all restrictions posed by export control regimes.
The tool assesses whether export guidelines apply to the goods in question as the user provides certain information. It then gives clear guidance to the user explaining what guidelines apply, how this affects the transaction and what to do next. Any national and international laws may be incorporated to reflect the most recent legal requirements.
The application lets companies generate automated triaging and documentation of tasks. If desired, a report and dashboard may be generated to monitor and visualize key compliance efforts which can prove the type of assessment that was carried out for certain exports of goods.
Background
Companies engaged in the manufacturing and export of certain goods have complex internal guidelines in place to ensure that employees comply with national and international export regulations and export controls. These pieces of legislation help protect national security and international peace, as well as the interests of the countries involved, while ensuring that the goods exported are not misused, ultimately preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
What is subject to export controls?
Export controls regulate the export of technologies, commodities and software that can be misused to threaten national security and trade of the exporting country, and most often include military items. However, the scope of export controls can also include waste, endangered species, pesticides, biocides, chemicals or certain food. And this broad scope makes it difficult for companies to standardize how they assess and continuously monitor the items subject to export controls, which in turn makes it difficult to stay compliant and avoid regulatory fines.
What are export controls fines?
While regulations differ across countries, most are consistent in severity with which they fine the transgression of applicable export controls. For instance, under the US Export Control Reform Act, criminal penalties for export controls non-compliance include up to 20 years of imprisonment and up to $1 million in fines per violation. A similar regime exists in the UK, where, in the period March-September 2020 alone, the Department for International Trade has fined cases of non-compliance in the amount of over 700,000 for export control violations.
How export control guidelines affect business operations
To comply with the international and national regulations, and account for industry- and practice-specific activities, companies develop their own guidelines to manage export compliance.
However, these internal guidelines are often highly specific and difficult to understand by business users, which leads to the legal team receiving a high volume of similar enquiries. As business users feel uncomfortable applying specific guidelines themselves, legal teams are overwhelmed by a high number of manual assessments that require their attention. This turns legal teams into a bottleneck, taking up a significant portion of their time, as they try to work through the numerous, repetitive, yet sometimes slightly different requests. With BRYTER, companies can build a digital Export Compliance Guide which ensures that all relevant checks and compliance efforts are correctly conducted before exporting goods that are subject to export control regulations.
The application guides the user through various steps required to ensure that all the necessary checks, licenses and notifications are in place to comply with export control regulations. The user feeds all the necessary inputs through an interactive questionnaire, which are then screened against the regulations.
Based on the result of the screening, our business reporting software offers instructions and suggestions to ensure proper compliance is achieved or, if needed, indicate that further input from the legal department is necessary. This way, the company turns their export control processes digital, reducing chances of error in a highly sensitive field of work and ensuring full compliance, regardless of goods exported.
Benefits
Automated & standardized
By automating their workflow with the Export Compliance Guide, companies ensure that all export compliance activities are correctly conducted. As a result, companies can adopt a consistent approach towards and proper documentation of compliance efforts with regard to export control regulations.
Faster execution
The Export Compliance Guide speeds up the compliance efforts and saves up to 70% of the time spent on compliance checks. It replaces the need to frequently contact the legal and compliance departments.
Centralized audit trail
Within the Export Compliance Guide, all relevant inputs and assessments can be tracked and documented in a centralized audit trail. This makes it easy for companies to prove and document compliant behavior.
Integrated
The Export Compliance Guide can easily be integrated into an existing IT infrastructure. It easily =intertwines with other tools and databases and enables a seamless export compliance workflow.
Highly customizable
The Export Compliance Guide is fully customizable to reflect a company’s unique guidelines, processes and workflows, and thus ensure full compliance, enabling business users to manage export with confidence.
How it works
Provide information
Through a customizable and user-friendly questionnaire, all the relevant information needed to assess the export of particular goods is collected and processed. Based on the provided information, the Export Compliance Guide assesses the product and circumstances against applicable regulations.
Receive guidance
The Guide then provides the user with clear step-by-step guidance and actionable tasks to ensure compliance with all applicable export control regimes.
Understand risks
A dashboard that contains all conducted assessments and respective outcomes gives companies an overview of potential risks. The assessments are recorded in a centralized audit trail in order to prove compliance with export control regimes if required, which allows specific departments and entire organizations to be more knowledge-driven and make critical decisions faster.