New Found Efficiency With Customs Automation

Ideal Standard integrated with CAS in phases. First, they went live with their export flows from the UK to Europe, and eight months later, they launched imports into the UK through CAS. From the beginning, Ideal Standard integrated CAS with their ERP system, SAP, and invested IT resources to utilise the automation possibilities fully. Due to the preparation work done in the run-up to Brexit, they already had a substantial amount of data and documentation available to facilitate the integration.

When Ideal Standard started using CAS for exports, they had to deal with new customs management responsibilities after Brexit. With patience and training they slowly built up their knowledge and expertise.

For the implementation of imports with CAS, they felt supported. “Exports were initially a challenging period, however, it only improved from there. Implementing imports went very smoothly, the training was excellent, the testing process was thorough, and we now know who to contact in case of issues,” said Debbie Chorlton, Customs Clearance Manager at Ideal Standard.

“We now feel very confident in managing our customs operations in CAS. For example, we completely manage decision tables ourselves. This seemed daunting at the beginning but is actually very straightforward once you understand the logic,” said Chris Parrott, DC Administration Supervisor at Ideal Standard.

Customers can utilise the CAS test environment during onboarding and after going live. “We use the test environment constantly, testing tweaks in configurations to understand the consequences. We try to break it in the test environment first, and then when everything is correct, we implement it in production, which is a huge advantage for us,” said Chris Parrott, DC Administration Supervisor at Ideal Standard.

Ideal Standard found that working with customs brokers for all their customs operations was expensive and not sustainable long-term, which was one of the primary triggers for switching to insourcing customs. By in-housing its customs operations, Ideal Standard achieved significant savings compared to its broker costs.

“With C4T, we have the freedom to use a hybrid model of self-filing and brokers. This flexibility enables us to manage most of our flows internally while outsourcing others, such as deep-sea shipments, to brokers,” said Debbie Chorlton, Customs Clearance Manager at Ideal Standard.

By automating their customs processes, Ideal Standard can speed up their declaration process, achieving time efficiencies between 50% and 75% compared to before.

“CAS brings us huge time savings. Exports are now completed 75% quicker, and our import declarations have sped up by 50%. We used to wait for our broker to process our declarations for up to four hours. With CAS, our declarations are released in a fraction of that time,” said Debbie Chorlton, Customs Clearance Manager at Ideal Standard.

In addition to the time and cost advantages, CAS always ensures compliance with customs regulations, providing an automatic audit trail and the ability to check everything in one central place. CAS offers Ideal Standard more control over their data, instant access to customs documents, and keeps their supply chain running smoothly.

“As soon as you understand the background of CAS, it’s an easy-to-use, intuitive process. When an error pops up, we can fix it in 99% of cases. It takes just seconds to fix the error and resubmit to customs,” said Debbie Chorlton, Customs Clearance Manager at Ideal Standard.