CCEWeb in ship-shape

June 22, 2001
By James Lewis

A Canadian company has teamed up with Adobe Systems of San Jose, Calif., in a bid to change the standard format for international trade documentation and settlements, while keeping the old rules intact.

Jacob Katsman, chief executive of Toronto's CCEWeb, says the @GlobalTrade product, still in its test phase, will use Adobe's PDF standard to cut down on the time and money it takes to process paper forms during international transactions.

"Our job is to allow international trade to be done electronically. Today, it involves a lot of paperwork," Katsman says. So much so that, according to a press release from Adobe and CCEWeb, the United Nations pegs the cost of processing trade-related forms at US$640 billion each year.

CCEWeb picked Adobe's PDF standard because of its ubiquity - about 350 million people use Acrobat Reader, based on free downloads from Adobe's site and installations at its OEM partners - as well as its encryption and authentication features, says Mark James, Adobe's e-paper business development manager.

In addition, Adobe's use of XML, which allows documents to be dynamic and update themselves automatically, even filling in fields as values change, was a key benefit, Katsman says. He explains that even the tiniest mistake in a paper copy of a form can hold up a shipment, driving up costs. With paper, the only thing you can do is correct the mistake and send out a new document by courier or fax; many banks also charge a fee for paperwork errors.

@GlobalTrade's target audience is the banking industry. Thus far, CCEWeb has won over German commerce giant Dresdner Bank, as well as Singapore's Overseas Union Bank and the U.S.'s Premier Bank. Nearly every major bank plays a part in international trade by guaranteeing letters of credit for buyers and sellers in different countries.

It's these letters of credit, thousands of which are issued daily, that the program aims to move into electronic format. In a typical international import-export deal, banks in both the seller's and buyer's countries get involved, charging their own fees for facilitating the trade. Under the @GlobalTrade model, only one bank needs to get involved, to check the credit of the buyer.

Once a transaction has been approved, the system sends copies of the documents to other parties in the shipping chain, including insurance companies, customs brokers, and shipment inspectors. After they're done, all documents are sent back to a document clearance centre.

Although it sounds like it could be manna for international trade, there are a few obstacles to @GlobalTrade's adoption. Any technology-based solution has to keep the current rules of trade intact, especially the 70-year-old UCP 500 rule book that governs letters of credit and similar documents.

Adobe's James, who's been working with CCEWeb for a year and a half on the project, says another obstacle is the varying levels of technological sophistication around the world.

"In a lot of countries, they're just now starting to get the infrastructure to join this sort of global, e-business process," James says, whereas in Canada, the Customs and Revenue Agency has been using PDF forms for tax filing and other documentation for some time. CBIZ