Pincvision Responds Faster to Changes in Trade Compliance with Progress Corticon

Every company involved in export and logistics needs to comply with international business legislation. Pincvision, a Dutch technology company that helps large multinational organizations put in place trade compliance processes in the areas of customs, environment, export documents, EU intrastat and VAT. Pincvision deploys years of experience, knowledge and manpower into intelligent IT solutions that handle trade compliance in an unambiguous and consistent manner in all countries where their customers do business. 

Pincvision must continuously keep its intelligent IT systems up to date with the new laws and regulations issued in almost all countries. The specialists at Pincvision therefore continuously monitor the legal field and pass on regulatory changes, such as the temporary reduction of VAT in Germany or ones related to the departure of England from the European Union, to the IT department.  

The IT team would process the changes directly in the software, which turned out too slow, inefficient and expensive. "We were looking for a way to implement new laws and regulations in our services more quickly," Edwin Kampshoff, CIO of Pincvision said. "Ideally, we wanted the business itself to be able to handle the process, so that we could be fast in responding to changes and no longer adapt the software.” 

Pincvision leaned on Progress® Corticon® Business Rules Management System to implement their business logic and streamline the process of updating rules. 

Compliance rules are typically embedded in the code of most software applications. With Corticon, that logic is centralized in a separate layer so that changes to these rules can be implemented without changing the code in production. Specialists and data analysts at Pincvision can offer the specific transactional data provided by the customer in the system to Corticon via a user-friendly, Excel-like frontend. Corticon then processes these large data files of thousands of trade compliance rules via the SQL Server backend in Microsoft Azure, where data harmonization, additional calculations and consolidations are automatically observed.  

A major advantage for Pincvision was that they were able to perform rules integrity checks through Corticon. Once rules were defined in the system, it checked whether they were complete. For example, if an if/else scenario was missing the system would notify experts that the rule was not complete. The check for completeness and correctness ensures that specialists never overlook important matters and that the output is watertight," Kampshoff said. 

Centralizing the business knowledge was another major win for Pincvision. Edwin Kampshoff explained, "We wanted the knowledge within the organization to no longer be exclusively held by our specialists. Previously, there was a good chance that knowledge was lost when an expert left the organization. By using Corticon, we were able to democratize their knowledge by implementing specific business rules and the automated actions associated with them into the system." In addition, it was important for Pincvision that Corticon could handle diverse data sources: Customer data often comes in different formats and Corticon integrates easily with various existing infrastructures.  

Thanks to Corticon, Pincvision's legal specialists were no longer dependent on the IT department to implement changes and it became easier for them to share knowledge in one central location. In addition, Corticon ensured that all rules in the system were checked for completeness, so that errors were reduced to minimum and the quality of Pincvision's services remained high. In this way, Pincvision’s customers can do business abroad without any worries.  

“With Corticon, we can now implement changes in laws and regulations in our services in real time, whereas previously it would take us days,” Kampshoff said. “In addition, we can connect with new customers about 70% faster by cleverly reusing existing business rules. For us, that is another important benefit of the Progress business rules solution." 

"Corticon gives us the speed and agility to respond to the constantly changing laws and regulations in the various areas of trade compliance,” shared Kampshoff. “In addition, we can quickly onboard new customers, which has helped us grow the business by 30% in recent years." 

About Pincvision 

Pincvision is the #1 partner in global trade compliance outsourcing. For more than 15 years, they have been the partner of choice for large multinationals who want to do business around the world. Years of experience, knowledge and manpower are all combined in services in the areas of customs, environment, export documents, intrastat, and VAT. For more information, please visit: www.pincvision.com