Supply chain problems are nothing new to importers. Before the invention of the container, an importer could expect to lose some of their goods due to pilfering by dock workers or other people that would touch the products along the way to their end destination. Shipments would be loaded and unloaded multiple times, increasing the chance shipments would not be complete upon arrival.

Things have changed a great deal since the invention of the container, which provides security for shipments and allows importers to ship more types of goods to the United States from all over the world. Today, frozen shrimp are sent from Vietnam in refrigerated containers and chemicals are sent in sealed tanks from India. Just fifty years ago, none of this was possible.

However, importers still face issues. From Customs' holds on perishable goods to untrustworthy suppliers, today importers have the ability to use technology to overcome many of these challenges. Instead of goods walking out of a container, companies now provide seal technology to lock in goods. Some importers are even utilizing RFID tags and GPS chips to track shipments along the way.

The most advanced importers are going beyond U.S. Customs' online interface to track imports. While the government's system allows importers to view their own Customs entries in great detail, using AMS data tools, like Zepol’s TradeIQ, lets them see their competitors' and suppliers' entries as well. This provides them with invaluable real time intelligence into their markets.

The key to using any import technology is to be able to prove a return on investment to stake holders within your organization. Some of the time, it is very easy to do, for example winning a judgment against a counterfeiter or disreputable supplier, but it can also be difficult to show a dollar value on the intelligence that was gained and what part that played into either a cost savings or revenue generating project. It is our goal here at Zepol to ensure our customers are able to find this return, but also exceed their expectations.

The U.S. Census Bureau released their Merchandise Trade data numbers on September 10th, 2009. As you can see illustrated below, there was another increase in the Merchandise Trade deficit this month of the same size in June (click here to see June's U.S. Census data update). Export totals stayed about the same, decreasing 1.25% while total Imports rose by 6.45%. This increased the deficit by 23% from June and is a 73% increase from the smallest deficit of the year in February. This increase brings the deficit to $266 billion for the year, which is still down 44.5% from the same period in 2008.

Below is an in-depth breakdown of the U.S. Census Merchandise Trade data released last week. This month we have highlighted 5 interesting items that we found while looking at July's data; here are the hightlights:

1. Imports of cars were up, but again only slightly
2. The Trade Deficit grows, but it is driven by oil
3. Deficits with our largest trading partners are growing
4. Africa's largest products are still fuel
5. School supply demand has gone down

Click here for Zepol’s U.S. Census Merchandise Trade Data Update for July 2009

On September 8th, Zepol completed the data for August in our U.S. Customs trade data tool, TradeIQ. August's results show that imports are up from July by 3.1% marking a third straight month of growth, even though this is a decline in the growth rate from previous Augusts. Moreover, total containerized imports are still down 9.81% from the same time last year.

Below is a table showing the port regions of the world where shipments originated:
Asian ports are experiencing uneven growth. Vietnam's ports have steadily increased their business with the United States over the last year with over 4,500 shipments for the month; while not a major player in the region, other similarly sized port nations in the region barely grew or had negative growth in the same time period.

Below are the top 10 Asian countries by port shipment count growth from August 2008:
Zepol's U.S. Customs trade data is taken from Bills of Lading entered into the Automated Manifest System. The information represents the number of House manifests entered by importers of waterborne containerized goods. This indicator is the earliest data available for the previous month’s trade activity.

On Tuesday, Google's Apps went down for 100 minutes, read the story here. This outage left users of all Google tools without access during the middle of a business day. Companies that rely upon these applications for email, word processing documents, and spreadsheets, were left out in the cold as their customers wondered why they were not being tended to and projects were delayed.

Free or very cheap software as a service (SaaS) products like Google Apps provide a nice entry point for many companies that cannot afford reliable, more established services. However, if your company provides a service or goods to organizations with high demands on performance and reliability (what company does not now?), then you should ensure your vendors have a long history of performance before implementing a system. This is how Zepol does business and how we choose the companies that we do business with. We do not choose fly-by-night organizations, but rather heavily research vendors, ensuring they are not only reliable and established, but also do business the right way.

From our experience in the trade data industry, we know there are many companies that work like ours, researching vendors before subscribing to the service that may not be the least expensive, but provides the lowest cost of ownership and most benefits. There are others that choose providers based completely on cost and ignore the time wasted when they experience inevitable down times that come from vendors using either antiquated systems or unreliable outsourcing vendors to cut costs.

In the last week, several companies in our industry have experienced interruptions in service to their email programs and databases because they outsource their business applications and storage to companies that are unable to maintain the huge computing requirements in this industry. Because outages affect our core business (providing timely, on-demand data to our customer base), Zepol ensures that we fully vet our vendors, own and manage the most advanced server technology on the market, and have redundant systems to ensure our customers and prospects always receive the best care.