SPR Merges Multiple Apps into an Impactful Customer System Using AWS Cloud Services

A customs brokerage and compliance company provides technology and services to simplify the customs and trade process for international consumer good and industrial product companies around the world. Many of their customers are manufacturer or durable goods companies who have a high volume of import and export activity due to parts being assembled in different countries. Each time goods cross a border, it must be meticulously documented so the customers pay the appropriate taxes and tariffs.

Internationally, the company also offers international trade consulting and freight forwarding. the company helps their customers better manage their customs compliance, leverage preferential trade agreements, and build better import processes.

The company has grown organically and through acquisition. This growth resulted in a suite of applications that managed different phases of the customs and trade process, duplicate functionality, and the company clients using different applications.  The company also continuously adapted their apps to better support their growing customers. Each disparate application provided specific functionality, but with minimal overlap or integration between systems. The company was also relying on a number of manual processes to meet their clients’ needs.

Due to the disparate applications, workflows were  fragmented and reporting across the systems was a challenge. The company needed a single platform that could support the lifecycle of goods traveling from one location to another, needed data in once place, and wanted customers to generate reports to help them manage their business more effectively.

The company's applications weren’t managed centrally by a single product owner, and different customers and systems had different subject matter experts tied to their development and maintenance. Product teams also faced challenges in effectively communicating with and learning from their end users. The company hired a new product owner, but the new product owner wasn’t familiar with agile product development.

SPR also deployed a team of UX experts to develop a modern interface and streamline user flows to simplify workflow management.

Working with the company's product owners, the SPR team created a single cloud-native application that managed the entire workflow previously managed by the company's multiple applications including:

• Solicitation

During the solicitation phase, the system will determine if imported and exported goods are eligible for a free international trade agreement. When items aren't easily classified or don't fit an existing classification, the company solicits additional information from customers and manufacturers.

• Classification

When goods cross a border, the ‘classification code’, which defines the nature of every part/product that crosses a customs border, must be reported to customs. The system will determine the code that is assigned to each product.

• Qualification

Similar to the solicitation phase, the system will determine how a product shipment aligns with trade agreement rules and if it qualifies for free trade or reduced customs charges based on the value of the parts and considerations like where products are assembled. This information is used by customs.

• Post Entry

Audits are completed after goods have crossed international borders to ensure they were classified correctly. It’s during this phase that clients can go back to customs and dispute classifications, possibly resulting in qualifying for a free trade agreement.

Additionally, automated workflows identify when to generate complimentary application requests and update results from one process to another.

In a greenfield build, SPR used Kubernetes-orchestrated microservices in the AWS cloud, creating a new, cloud-native application that took advantage of cloud benefits, including:

• Centralized security provided by AWS Cognito (including a configuration-based integration with the existing Identity Provider)
• Dynamic resource management
• Serverless compute resources via AWS Lambda and AppSync
• Secrets management provided by Secrets Manager
• Workflow management with AWS Step Functions
• Easy database management via AWS RDS
• Easy infrastructure deployment using Cloudformation, taking advantage of standard configuration libraries rather than coding them from scratch

This new system not only improves overall business efficiency, but it also allows business users have direct access to infrastructure and application costs and precisely budget for and control total cost of ownership. Integrated security provided by native AWS components allows the business the peace of mind of knowing the application and data is secure.

• .NET 5 (now 6)
• Business Logic: C#
• Infrastructure: CloudFormation, AWS CDK (Python), AWS SDK for .NET, AWS RDS, AWS EKS, ELBs, AppSync, API Gateway, s3, CloudFront, EFS, CloudWatch, Certificate Manager, Cognito, Lambda, Lambda@Edge, SSM Param Store, Secrets Manager, Route 53, AMP (Prometheus), AWS Grafana, SQS, SES…
• CI/CD: External repos and pipelines with platform-native in-cluster build containers

As an AWS Advanced Consulting Partner, SPR leverages the AWS platform and services to build cutting-edge cloud solutions that significantly reduce IT spend and help our clients focus on their business and the needs of their customers. SPR is a go-to partner in the following areas:

• Application Development/Modernization (serverless, microservices, containers, etc.)
• Data (warehouse/pipeline, migration/modernization, and ML)
• Cloud Enablement & Migration (Well-Architected Review, Immersion Day, and Cloud Readiness Assessment)