May 31st, 2011 – Guildford, UK – Kewill (LSE: KWL) has been selected by Westcon Africa, a leading value added distributor of advanced technologies, enterprise mobility, data centre technologies and power and printing solutions, to provide and implement Kewill’s Export Compliance System (ECS), a real-time exception based compliance screening service, so it can cope with legislative requirements and continuity with government requirements by automating current practices, reducing exposure to risk.
Kewill ECS will improve Westcon Africa’s functionality for international compliance activities, including the ability to support all global regulatory and statutory compliance requirements as directed by its corporate governance.
John Wolfenden, CFO Westcon Africa, said, “Initially we looked at managing the screening process ourselves. We explored the option of reviewing the lists available and screening manually, but it became apparent that there are a lot of lists that need to be checked, and it would have been a very labour intensive process. We need to make sure we have a comprehensive solution in place, as if we were to trade with a denied party, it could have a massive impact on our entire organisations trading abilities.”
When Westcon Africa’s ERP and CRM solution is completed later in the year, ECS will be integrated as part of the roll out, providing an automated solution which includes denied party screening. The removal of manual search, editing and other varied practices will add value to the operation immediately in the form of a compliant status.
Jacquie Boast, Chief Operating Officer for EMEA at Kewill, commented, “ECS will provide Westcon Africa with a business critical tool that will provide the organisation with a host of benefits, including the ability to make swift and decisive compliance decisions to speed up transaction processing.”
ECS provides a real-time exception-based compliance screening service to ensure proactive due diligence of international business transactions. Specifically, ECS performs mandated government compliance screening for restricted parties, embargoed countries, and export license determination. In addition, ECS also checks for “red flag” indicators to screen “end use”, as well as “end users”. To facilitate internal management and communication, ECS provides an optional notification service and audit trail.
About Westcon Africa
Westcon Africa, part of the Westcon Global group, is a leading value added distributor of advanced technologies, data centre technologies, enterprise mobility, power and printing solutions. The company aligns its growth initiatives with its partners to take full advantage of the regions business potential and leverage the aggressive ICT adoption by end users to drive profitability.
Westcon Africa operates from 10 African locations, including marketing and logistics offices in Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, Mauritius and South Africa, with additional logistics offices in the UK and Dubai.
www.westconafrica.com
About Kewill plc
Kewill delivers solutions that simplify global trade and logistics.
Global businesses face ever increasing complexity across their supply chains including decisions on sourcing, customs, compliance, transportation, storage, finance, visibility and connectivity. Inefficiency in any of these areas will lead to supply chain delays and result in increased costs. Kewill has a suite of software solutions that significantly simplify the management of the most complex global supply chains for enterprises and logistics service providers.
With experience in global trade management and logistics since 1972, and over 600 employees worldwide, Kewill is a long-time innovator of solutions for manufacturers, distributors, retailers, freight forwarders, transport companies, customs brokers, 3PL’s and 4PL’s, as well as other related institutions involved in financing and underwriting global trade such as banks and insurance providers.
Kewill’s solutions are in daily use by more than 40,000 users worldwide and our global customer base which entrusts us with the management of their supply networks includes divisions of Bayer, Caterpillar, DHL, FedEx, Ford, General Electric, General Motors, H.J. Heinz, Kimberly-Clark, Kraft, Levi Strauss, Mazda, Nestlé, Nike, Palm, Procter & Gamble, Smith & Nephew, Sony, TNT, Unilever, UPS, Vodafone, Yamaha, Xerox.
www.kewill.com