RL - Public Sector

axway.com 2 In a landmark agreement in 2007, the leaders of the ASEAN countries adopted the ASEAN Community Blueprint. This agreement committed to transform ASEAN into a highly competitive single market and production base by 2015, fully integrated into the global economy. To achieve this goal, the organization highlighted the importance of replacing the manual, paper-based customs systems with an integrated, automated approach. This approach was named the ASEAN Single Window (ASW), a concept that had begun to be discussed in the region a few years earlier. Setting course for transformation The aim of the ASW was to expedite cargo clearance and promote ASEAN economic integration by enabling the electronic exchange of border trade- related documents among member states. ASEAN set stringent operational and technical requirements for the ASW. The ASW platform had to be capable of exchanging information in a resilient and secure way, consistent with local regulations and international best practices. The platform would be designed to ensure that shippers needed to submit their data once only, reducing costs and the risk of human error. Finally, the ASW's trade workflows would need to minimize the amount of time required to complete the customs clearance process — contributing to faster shipping and lower warehousing costs. Selecting an enterprise-class solution With the support of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), ASEAN launched a pilot project to demonstrate the ASW could deliver on these three key requirements. After an in-depth evaluation of B2B integration platforms from a number of leading global vendors, ASEAN selected Axway B2Bi as the foundation for its pilot project. Combining EDI and API integration capabilities, B2Bi enabled ASEAN to support all the core technical requirements of the pilot project with minimal manual work, contributing to a fast and straightforward deployment. Moreover, the Axway solution offered a high level of security and full, end-to- end visibility of B2B transactions on the platform, meeting the organization's stringent requirements around data governance and information security. Several companies in the region were already using the Axway solution to support large-scale, mission-critical document interchange, which reassured ASEAN that B2Bi had the scalability to accommodate rapid growth in transaction volumes and meet its long-term objectives. Working together with Axway, ASEAN deployed B2B gateways at the National Single Window (NSW) of each member state, which created a link between the ten NSWs for the exchange of documents. The platform also links to the central ASW platform — hosted in the organization's regional center in Jakarta, Indonesia — for tracking and record-keeping. Axway came to this project not just as an IT vendor, but as a company that understands how customs and clearance processes work. Rebecca Acuña, Economic Growth & Governance Team Lead, USAID Regional Development Mission for Asia

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