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Company Name - NVIDIA Corporation http://www.nvidia.com/
Industry
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High-tech graphic chips
Key
Challenge
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Creation of Legal Units in GTS utilizing the
Storage Location as the Country of Departure. |
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Ability
to perform License Determination with several legal regulations. |
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Ability
to make mass classification changes for Schedule B’s and HTS codes. |
Implementation
Partner - EntryPoint Consulting,
LLC www.entrypointconsulting.com
Solution
and Services
SAP
Global Trade Services 7.0 (with the SAP Customs and Compliance
Management application)
Existing
Environment
SAP R/3® 4.7
Key
Benefits
Background
NVIDIA Corporation has proven
over the years to be a worldwide leader in advanced graphics. NVIDIA
has developed this technology for the consumer as well as professionals
since 1993.
NVIDIA has created
programmable graphics processor technologies and continues to develop
industry-changing products for mobile devices, electronics and
computing.
NVIDIA has created a wide
spectrum of products ranging from the NVIDIA graphics processing unit
(GPU), media and communications processor (MCP) including NVIDIA
GeForce®, NVIDIA GoForce®, NVIDIA Quadro®, and NVIDIA nForce®.
NVIDIA
was founded in 1993 and is publicly traded on NASDAQ under the symbol
NVDA.
Why the Need for a Global Trade Solution
NVIDIA is a multinational
organization supplying customers and vendors around the world. NVIDIA
implemented GTS 1.0, but due to system limitations at the time, only
implemented SPL screening. However, when they first implemented GTS,
they created 4 SPL Legal Regulations. This resulted in enormous amounts
of false positive hits in GTS, but in conjunction it would potentially
hit on all 4 legal regulations.
With the
advanced technology of GTS 7.0, they were ready to implement Embargo as
well as Export License Determination. The biggest challenge that NVIDIA
faced was their current R/3 solution using Foreign Trade for License
Determination. Their R/3 solution was using the Country of the Plant
for determining the Country of Departure instead of the Storage Location
Country. In several instances, the Storage Locations were housed in a
different country than the Plant. This resulted in the Export License
Determination to be calculated incorrectly.
Additionally,
NVIDIA has an internal order process (IBR) using a Web Service that
needed to be interfaced to GTS to perform SPL, Embargo and License
Determination screening in order to ensure compliance.
Key Issues and Opportunities
One of
the first items to be addressed was the consolidation of the 4 Legal
Regulations for SPL down to two (1. for the Lobby Sign in application
and 2. for the EAR legal regulation in GTS).
From
NVIDIA's initial integration with GTS 1.0, they already had an existing
relationship with a third-party vendor, MK Denial; which is the leading
data provider for Sanctioned and Denied Parties. The MK Denial files
needed to be updated on a consistent basis within GTS. An existing
program was updated to upload the MK Delta file on a daily basis,
followed by re-indexing the database. This allowed the GTC
team to utilize the new "Positive/Negative" list
functionality.
Thus allowing the ability to move either false positive business
partners onto the Positive list, or conversely moving a Business
Partner that passes SPL, but NVIDIA has decided to not to do business
with.
As
mentioned above, the biggest challenge NVIDIA faced was ensuring that
License Determination was being performed based on the Country of
Departure of the Storage Location. This required creating several
hundred Legal Units into GTS for each Plant/Storage Location
combination. Once this was completed, the next challenge was to move
this master data into each of the testing environment, eventually
landing in the Production environment.
Using existing GTS 7.0 functionality, the transportation resulted in
approximately 5 minutes to transport into Production, versus several
days of data processing. Once the license determination configuration
was completed, prototyping began to validate that multiple legal
regulations could be determined simultaneously in the system. This was a
huge success for GTC and will be integrated into their Production
environment in the near future.
Product
Classification was also integrated into GTS. This resulted in adding
both HTS and Schedule B codes in the system. The GTC team will
eventually be phasing out Schedule B codes in the beginning of 2007.
Prior to the GTS upgrade, the GTC team scrubbed all the master data for
ECCN, HTS and Schedule B codes. This resulted in all clean data
migrating into GTS.
Facts
and Figures
After reducing the number of
legal regulations for SPL screening, the GTC team immediately saw a
reduced number of false positives, and alerts. In addition, with the
License Determination activities being performed in GTS, they were able
to feel confident that the screening was not only accurate, but also
complaint.
The IBR
interface was moved off of a custom program in R/3 into GTS for SPL,
Embargo and License Determination screening. This allowed the GTC team
to no longer classify their products in both R/3 and GTS. An automated
tool was also put into place for the classification process. This
allowed a program to upload the data into both GTS and R/3. Manual
screening was also a manual task that had to be completed by users in
the master data creation, purchasing, sales order and delivery
processing.
This was a time-consuming activity and a large lack of consistency in
the process as, well as the resolution of the item in question.
NVIDIA
teamed up with implementation partner EntryPoint Consulting, LLC. The
go-live went so well that management declared it a "stealth" upgrade.
One of the first projects in a long time that implemented on time and,
most importantly, on budget.
The GTC team said "this one of the most successful implementations they
have ever had." The GTC team worked extremely well providing all data
needed in a very timely manner, thus resulting in the project remaining
on track.
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