BIS is encouraging industry to use the following best practices to avoid unlawful diversion:

• Pay heightened attention to BIS’s Red Flag Indicators and communicate red flag concerns internally.

• Seek to utilize only those trade facilitators and freight forwarders that administer sound export control management and compliance programs that include transshipment trade best practices.

• Obtain detailed information on the credentials of foreign customers to assess diversion risk.

• For routed transactions, establish and maintain a trusted relationship with parties to mitigate risks.

• Communicate export control classification and destination information to end-users and consignees on government and commercial export documentation.

• Provide the ECCN or the EAR99 classification to freight forwarders for all export transactions and report the classifications in the Automated Export System (AES), if applicable.

• Use information technology to the maximum extent feasible to augment “know your customer” and other due-diligence measures in combating the threats of diversion and increase confidence that shipments will reach authorized end-users for authorized end-uses.

The full list of Best Practices can be found here

Responsible for the administration of customer service issues, customer communications and customer requests and orders on a daily basis. Maintain and ensure integrity of all customer data in the business systems, including customer property, orders and associated dollars.  Assure that all customer requests for quotes are properly managed in the PTS system. Responsible for maintaining and ensuring accurate backlog, orders, and market segmentation data. Position Specification Education/Experience

• An Associates or Bachelors degree with a minimum of 5 years related industry work experience.
• Solid understanding of military and commercial export compliance regulations.
• Demonstrated ability to effectively and professionally communicate with all levels in the organization, vendors and customers.
• Understanding of pricing models.
• Proven negotiation skills.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills.
• Strong computer skills with working knowledge of MS Office and Access.
• Proven team-work capabilities and experience.

• Understanding of the Fourth Shift or Syteline ERP system.
• Able to handle and resolve customer complaints and problems and escalate when required.
• Willing and able to develop long-term relationships internally and externally.
• Attention to detail.

The Customer Service Representative provides support to both the internal and external customers of the company.  This position plays an active role in the maintenance and management of the various business systems. Success in this role will require a proactive approach and the ability to create and implement process improvements to ensure that the systems and processes are as robust as possible to provide superior service to the customers.

Duties and Responsibilities

• Responsible for the accurate and timely management of all sales order activity.
• Ensure all sales data is accurate and complete in order to maintain order, market and backlog reporting integrity including schedule and associated dollars.
• Responsible for raising export compliance concerns to the DECA or DECA backup when required.
• Serves as a central point of contact for customer inquiries. Provides customers with updated order and delivery status.
• Responsible for inputting data (RFQs, pricing, status, etc) into the PTS (Proposal Tracking System) and ensuring that all data is accurate and complete and up to date.
• Provides engineering with request for quote information required to initiate estimating process.
• Performs contract review and order acceptance process. Controls and maintains master contracts/ purchase order files.
• Assists with the configuration control process.
• Performs the EDI transaction conversion to the business system. Tracks changes in delivery dates, prices and handles terminations.
• Maintains customer information in the various business systems.
• Responsible for disseminating Terms and Conditions, special shipping instructions, configuration changes and quality requirements throughout the organization.
• Assists accounting with invoicing and collection issues.
• Review Customer Scorecards.
• Perform other duties as required by the business and as instructed by supervisor.

Essential Functions of Position

Interpersonal Skills

• Must be able to communicate clearly and effectively with all levels of personnel within the organization and the customer.
• Must be able to communicate orally and/or in writing as to work requirements, work in progress, and/or work completion
• Must be able to follow complex instructions and/or directions. May require ability to decide on a course/sequence of action

Schedule and Planning

• Must be able to schedule and organize time effectively to satisfactorily complete assigned tasks and functions.

Physical Effort

• Minimal physical effort
• May be required to travel occasionally to customer premises or corporate office.
• Operate personal computer.

Working Conditions

• Primarily work in office areas with exposure to shop floor.
• Generally responsible for the safety and clean up of own work area.

Disclaimer

• The above information on this job description has been designed to indicate the general nature and level of work performed by employees within this classification. It is not designed to contain or be interpreted as a comprehensive inventory of all duties, responsibility and qualification required of employees assigned to this job.

Contact Pamela R. Daly regarding this position at:

Barnes Aerospace

169 Kennedy Rd

Windsor, CT 06095

P: 860-687-5270

F: 401-228-0823

pdaly@barnesaero.com

]]> http://learnexportcompliance.bluekeyblogs.com/2011/07/05/available-customer-serviceexport-compliance-position/feed/ 0 http://learnexportcompliance.bluekeyblogs.com/2011/04/04/export-compliance-training-important-you-betcha/ http://learnexportcompliance.bluekeyblogs.com/2011/04/04/export-compliance-training-important-you-betcha/#comments Mon, 04 Apr 2011 15:41:53 +0000 John Black http://learnexportcompliance.bluekeyblogs.com/?p=1029 The risks of fines of hundreds of thousands — or even millions — of dollars for violations make export compliance important.  The complicated, arcane, and voluminous regulations that impose incredible burdens on your day-to-day business activities make export compliance difficult.  A thorough and effective multi-level company training program makes a reasonable level of export compliance achievable.

A company needs three levels of training

1)      Expert training: The core export compliance experts need to be experts on the rules

2)      Awareness training:  A wide range of company personnel need to trained to know what issues export rules create and how to handle them or whom to ask for help

3)      Executive training:  Top level management needs to understand the risks of violation and how export rules impact the company’s business activities so management can decide how much money and resources to spend on compliance.

This article will focus on expert training.  I will write articles later to discuss the other training.

A starting point for any company export compliance program is for the company to figure out what the rules are and how they apply they apply to the company’s products, technologies and activities.  This usually means that the company, depending on its size and export issues, appoints one or two, or maybe a few people to be the export compliance experts.  While someone new to export compliance theoretically could learn the rules by reading the rules, it is usually much better for the newbie to be taught what the rules say and how they work before digging into the voluminous, arcane, and complicated regulations.  There are various export control regulations—the Export Administration Regulations (EAR), the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), the Foreign Trade Regulations (FTR), plus the various Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) regulations—and the company needs to know if and how each of these regulations impacts the company.

And, unfortunately, a quick glance is not enough and common sense won’t help—who would think the ITAR regulates exports of items involved in sending TV signals for the Sunday football game to your house?  You need to learn what the rules actually say.  Beware of company folk lore—“we’ve always done it this way,” or “if we sell to the military its ITAR, but if we sell to somebody else it is not ITAR,” or “the ITAR does not let you put technical data in the ‘public domain.’”  You need to focus on learning the rules themselves.

Beware of oral information that contradicts the rules—whether from a government or other source.  Sure, maybe today the government interprets the word “green” to include “yellow” because yellow is a precursor to green.  But if the rules do not say that, and you act as if green does not include yellow, you have put yourself in a defendable position, to say the least.  Most of us do not talk to every government official in Washington so that we know the interpretation of the day — and we don’t know if 99% or only 0.01% of the government interprets green to include yellow.  Learn how to read the rules — then do what they say!

Once you start on the long path to becoming an expert on the rules, you have to figure out what procedures you will implement to help your company follow the rules.  Technically, in most cases, implementing procedures is optional because it is not a violation to fail to have compliance procedures.  It certainly is prudent, however, to implement compliance procedures if you want to do a good job on compliance.

Going to a live seminar is the best form of training.  There is nothing better than being able to interrupt a knowledgeable speaker and ask a question when it pops into your head.  A key part of live training may be the 5 minutes you spend at a break talking to the instructor about a specific issue.  Electronic or online training is better than nothing if your company is not willing to pay for live training, or if live training is otherwise not an option.

In any event, you need to make sure the people giving the training are experts on the rules.  They need to be able to give practical advice on the many different approaches you can take in implementing company procedures to follow the rules.  Verify the expertise of the trainers.  A person’s title or pay grade is not a key factor, nor is whether the person works in or outside of the government.  The best thing to do is talk to industry experts who actually have received training from the person giving the training you are considering.

Your goal should be to become an expert on the rules, or perhaps an expert on the rules that specifically impact your company.  This is a difficult task but you can do it.  (If I can do it, anybody can, trust me.)  To be an expert, you need regular and repeated training.  The first training you get to introduce you to the topic may be overwhelming, so just try to pick the most important issues—for example, take away the fact that you need to do export jurisdiction determinations and classifications for all of your hardware, technical data and software, but don’t worry if you didn’t memorize the second exception to the first prohibition in the antiboycott regulations.

Go to each training after the first with two objectives.  First, to hear people validate that what you think is true is true.  These export rules are often illogical and hard to believe so you might start doubting your understanding.  You will get value from just listening to somebody say that a convoluted rule means what you think it means.  You second objective is to learn more.  Eventually you need to understand the second exception to the first prohibition in the antiboycott regulations.  I know people who are experts and continue to attend the same seminar 5 – 10 times because they always get something new out of it.

If you are an export compliance professional, you need to embrace this reality:  The more you learn about the export compliance rules, the more difficult it becomes to comply with the rules.  Think about it:  A novice thinks export controls just mean taking care of exports of products.  As that person learns more he realizes that export compliance applies to hundreds of emails leaving his facility daily, and then that his employees with work visas present export compliance issues.  More and more training will not make your life easier, but will likely just add more things to your list of things do to as you learn about a rule you did not know about, or as you notice a different aspect of a rule.

As you can see, training is not a onetime event.  You should be training at least once a year, and I recommend twice a year in most cases.  I already discussed how the complexity of the rules calls for repeated training.  These rules also change.  The government procedures often change (hmm, the ITAR Agreement Guidelines come to mind!).  You need to stay up to date with changes and continue to grow and build your expertise.

Having well trained export compliance experts is good for your company.  Being a well-trained export compliance expert is good for you.  As your expertise grows, so does your confidence in your knowledge, and that puts you in a better position to tell your engineer “yes, it is true that we have to treat the employee with a work visa as an export issue.”  You will encounter people who want to comply with what the rules ought to say or what they would like for them to say.  You argue against those people by showing them what the rules say.  Your expertise will enable you to point to the rules as the basis for the positions you take so you can say “maybe it does not make sense, but this is what it says.”

And, of course, being well trained on export compliance is a valuable addition to your resume!

***************************************

John Black has been in the field of export controls since 1984, is a consultant with BSG Consulting and a regular speaker for The Export Compliance Training Institute (ECTI).  ECTI offers live seminars for US Companies and companies located overseas.  The current schedule of their seminars can be found at http://learnexportcompliance.com/schedule

Bruce says: “Although it may seem unusual that a male will be President of WIT-LA, it emphasized the point that the organization represents all the people involved in export-import trade and regulations. I look forward to working with a very talented board of directors of both genders and many different backgrounds, to create valuable programs that serve the trade community.”

Website: http://www.wit-la.org/index.asp

It is funny how many companies are getting so excited about the requirement to certify this.  The EAR and ITAR export licensing requirements have been in place forever.  If this certification requirement creates a problem for a company, I might guess that a company was not complying with the EAR and ITAR requirements related to releasing controlled technology to foreign national employees.  But, of course, it’s only a guess.  But, I would advise companies to be careful about complaining loudly about this certification requirement unless they know they have been doing a good job complying with the EAR and ITAR for their foreign national employees.

The temporarily good news is that the US Government announced that employers are not required to fill out Section 6 of the form (“Certification Regarding the Release of Controlled Technology or Technical Data to Foreign Persons in the United States”) until February 20, 2011.

Additional information available at: http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.5af9bb95919f35e66f614176543f6d1a/?vgnextiod=ef1ee46afc5fc210VgnVCM10000082ca60aRCRD&vgnextchannel=e7801c2c9be44210VgnVCM100000082ca60aRCRD

BIS has also revised the validated end-user authorization for Advanced Micro Devices China, Inc. by updating the list of the company’s approved buildings and the descriptions of items that are eligible for export, reexport, or in-country transfer to AMD.

Shipping after a license is denied is willful and knowing and intentional and criminal, and, by the way, stupid.  Not only did they know a license was required, they knew the USG would deny the license.  People could have gone to jail and companies could have been added to the denial list.   Not a mistake or accident here but intentionally violating the regulations.  Add that to nuclear facility, entity list, China and Pakistan, and you have a big ole stew of aggravating factors

Perhaps I should apologize for saying the violation was stupid.  My mother always says it is rude to say “stupid.”  OK, the violation demonstrates a lack of sound judgment and thought and illustrated behavior based greed.  I just assumed that everybody knows that if BIS denies your license application, there is a good chance BIS will watch your company closely because BIS suspects your company will ship anyway.  You know why BIS does that?  Because idiotic (my mother doesn’t read this stuff) companies ship anyway when their license is denied.

I have seen some people say this case is a new issue because it shows that if you export to somebody related to somebody on the list, you get in big trouble.  That is not what this case proves.  But it sure makes good hype for lawyers and consultants trying to scare up some work by saying it is not enough to screen the parties actually involved in the transaction because you have to find out all of the parties possibility related to the parties in the transaction and screen them too.

But, honestly, this case should scare only companies who decide to export after they get their license denied—and that is nothing new.  Ikaw buang!

This new license exception, STA (strategic trade authorization) is yet another child of the President’s Export Control Reform Initiative. As with any export control reforms/proposals there is not likely to be decision made any time in the near future.

Comments with regard to license exception STA must be received by BIS by February 7, 2011, for information on how to submit your comments visit: http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2010/2010-309689.htm (Federal Register)

The free conferences are limited to 100 people per session; to participate you must dial in at 866-917-2713; participant code: 4136642. You may also submit questions in advance of the training to be answered during the teleconference, submit your questions to oesdseminar@bis.doc.gov

Information available at: http://www.bis.doc.gov/news/2010/teleconference_opportunity_wolf.htm

BIS wants to make this process entirely online, and is seeking comments by January 24, 2011.

Federal Register: http://www.bis.doc.gov/news/2010/fr_11232010.pdf