Company Name   -  Applera Corporation  http://www.applera.com/

Industry -             Biotechnology

Key Challenge

	Automate current manual customs and compliance procedures.
	Improve traceability of record-keeping requirements.
	Centralize the Global Trade Management activates in a central system.
	Provide a way to clean and maintain trade data in an effective and efficient manner.
	Trade master data clean-up.
	Provide 24/7 Global Trade Management support.
	Consolidation of multiple shipments into single shipments for streamlining the import/export process.

Implementation Partner  -  EntryPoint Consulting, LLC   www.entrypointconsulting.com

Solution and Services

SAP Global Trade Services 2.0 (with the SAP Customs and Compliance Management application)

Existing Environment

SAP R/3® 4.7

Key Benefits

	Company-wide compliance monitoring through one central global system.
	More effective electronic processes and reduced manual input.
	Seamless integration with existing SAP infrastructure.
	Electronic record of all export screening results with traceability to the operator (compliance analyst).

Background

Applied Biosystems has demonstrated its position as a technology leader and driving force in the changing dynamics of the life science marketplace. The Applied Biosystems business is focused on the following markets: basic research, commercial research (pharmaceutical and biotechnology) and standardized testing, including forensic human identification, paternity testing and food testing. The company has an installed base of approximately 180,000 instrument systems in nearly 100 countries.

Basic research includes work at university, government and other non-profit institutions that focus on uncovering the basic laws of nature and understanding human disease. Pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies use Applied Biosystems' products to discover and develop new drugs more effectively. Standardized testing customers require systems that produce precise results from a high volume of automated tests.

Applied Biosystems (symbol ABI) is one of the two tracking stocks of Applera Corporation. Celera Genomics (symbol CRA) is the other, and both are traded on the New York Stock Exchange.

Why the Need for a Global Trade Solution

Applied Biosystems is a multinational organization supplying customers in over 100 countries. Exports originate primarily from the United States but, with regional manufacturing and distribution centers in Singapore, Australia and Japan, a global screening tool was essential to their compliance success.

Internal and external audits identified some areas that needed some attention so instead of doing the minimum to be compliant Applied Biosystems decided to use this as an opportunity to improve the global trade regulatory compliance procedures as well as improve their process efficiencies.

Key Issues and Opportunities

One of the first big steps in automating processes is to validate or clean your master data. Applied Biosystems purchased the FedEx Trade Network Harmonized Tariff Schedule (HTS) data. This was a key component to allow clean data to be used for processing the shipments.

MK Denial, the leading data provider for sanctioned and denied parties, was selected to support Applied Biosystems’ export screening controls. The MK Denial data was the basis for the SPL screening GTS would automate for all the master data and transactional data that passed through the system.

With these components in place, the next step was to change some procedures and processes to take advantage of the system. Applied Biosystems was now able to have centralized Global Trade Management activities. These included product classification, SPL monitoring, embargo monitoring, export documentation and license determination.

Facts and Figures

After cleaning up the master data and implementing the new processes, Applied Biosystems was able to see some great rewords for their efforts. Daily shipments from the US to the Netherlands were now able to be consolidated automatically. This process used to be completely manual from the consolidation to the export documentation. The process has improved dramatically from a time and effort perspective but even more importantly the process has improved tremendously from a data and compliance perspective. Applied Biosystems is now very confident that the documents they produce are quick, clean and compliant.

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. Since Go-Live, Applied Biosystems saves an average of 1-2 minutes per transaction due to GTS handling all the screening automatically.

The Global Trade Management team has also seen some great rewards after the implementation. Now all the blocked documents come to a central list in GTS where the team can work though processing them in real time as they show up on the list. Because the GTM team is so efficient they are able to use the staff in much more proactive ways instead of always being in a reactive mode prior to the implementation.

Applied Biosystems teamed up with implementation partner EntryPoint Consulting, LLC. The go-live went very smooth with no help-desk tickets created as a result of the go-live. Project Manager Noel Alven said, “this one of the most successful implementations this I have seen.“ The team had a lot of chemistry and put forth a system that has saved the company significant time and money, as well as helping the executives rest a little easier knowing that GTS is helping keep them compliant.