CUSTOMS BROKERS

Customs brokers must embrace automated solutions to succeed in B2C eCommerce

Why Customs Brokers
Choose Hurricane

Data Accuracy

Technology-driven enhanced and accurate data – including HS codes / duty & tax calculation / denied parties screening, ensuring your customers’ goods keep flowing.

Smoother Customs Flow

Complete customs ready data drives significant reduction to the on-hold rate for B2B and B2C shipments.

Remove Manual Processes

Fast and accurate real-time automation of customs data that removes expensive manual processes, enabling growth and margin improvement.

Improve Scalability

Technology that ensures your business can support customer growth without the need to increase your overheads.

Cross Border Customs Broker Solutions

Faster Customs Clearance

More than half of international eCommerce shipments take more than eight days to arrive at their destination with the time needed to clear customs the biggest single factor.

The introduction in the UK of BIRDS (Bulk Import Reduced Dataset) and the EU’s Import One-Stop Shop (IOSS) for low value consignments is simplifying the customs clearance process for B2C goods, resulting in more customs brokers moving into the cross-border eCommerce space.

Having the right systems in place is essential in supporting retailers who will typically have a mix of low and high value goods with the requirement to manifest each category of items separately, thereby enabling customs to clear your goods smoothly, quickly and with the correct payment of duties and taxes.

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SECTOR
PAIN POINTS

Inability to scale due to dependency on traditional manual processes rather than technology automation.

Poor classification of goods resulting in inaccurate customs declarations.

The wrong duty and tax calculation leading to charging errors and significant risk of back dated financial exposure when taxation authorities’ audits take place.

Protecting reputation, avoiding fines and other penalties that can result from a failure to flag prohibited and restricted items and denied parties.

HURRICANE
SOLUTIONS

The need for complete, accurate and valid data, including the right product description and HS code, is critical in the world of cross-border eCommerce as is the need for goods to move as fast as possible to the end consumer, while ensuring the most relevant customs regimes are maximised.

Yet set against these requirements is the greater level of complexity in B2C consignments with huge volumes and the different data elements that need to be captured for the multitude of products being moved.

Customs brokers are ultimately responsible for keeping their customers compliant and that means having the correct data sets, something that is only possible in B2C eCommerce through the integration of automated solutions and a reduction in dependency on manual operatives.

Hurricane is the world-leader in the provision of data services to enable customs brokers to enter into and scale in the cross-border eCommerce market.

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Calculate your Return on Investment with Hurricane

Martin Palmer
Co-Founder

Interesting Fact: I started my working life training to be an accountant but decided I hated numbers. (Ironically I now love them!). I really wanted to join the Hong Kong Police force but couldn’t do that until i was 24. I took a temporary job in Imports and 47 years later here I am.

Favourite Music: There only was one choice. Harry Chapin. Meant a lot to me in my early years as an import broker. We played Chapin for hours and this one seemed to cover so many modes.

Favourite Quote: “No man is an island”

Neil Harmer

Operations Director

Interesting Fact:  As a Geologist my idea of the perfect beach holiday is going to the beach and investigating the rocks in the cliffs behind.

Favourite Music:  Broken Stones – Paul Weller, I’m a huge Paul Weller / The Jam fan; Broken Stones is a very relaxing song, I love the use of the electric piano in it

Favourite Quote: “Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today”. This is a great quote by Benjamin Franklin, to have in your head when working through a series of tasks to help keep focused.

Robert Dundas
Sales Director

Interesting Fact:  One of my life goals is to be able to speak French, I’ve been doing Duolingo every day for the last five years, and I’m still rubbish! 

Favourite Music: Where do I even start! Tom Petty Running Down a Dream, this is my top-down driving next to the ocean song

Favourite Quote: “This time will pass”

ASHLEY DEXTER
CFO & Co-founder

Interesting Fact: I was nearly named Battle Dexter (I would have probably now been residing in one of His Majesty’s establishments)

Favourite Music: Even though I spent a few years in the music industry my taste of music was always a cause for concern with my colleagues, so to surprise them all my current favourite is Kids by MGMT (absolute belter)

Favourite Quote: “Quitters never win and winners never quit”

Ian Venner
CTO & Co-founder

Interesting Fact: Runs Red Lantern Records, a not-for-profit, ethical label as a side project, whose artists have regular national BBC radio airplay.

Favourite Music: Tom Waits, pretty much all of his work.  Beautifully observed avante-garde vignettes of life.  Oh, and anything really loud!

Favourite Quote: “It’s not the mountains we climb, but the grit in our shoe that grinds us down” – which sums up taking a business from start-up to enterprise.

Martyn Noble
CEO & Co-founder

Interesting Fact: Played a high standard of semi-professional rugby union (too many years ago now!)

Favourite Music: Led Zeppelin – Stairway to Heaven…my first live gig – Knebworth 11th August 1979, the track never grows old and is the iconic song of ‘hope’ whatever mood you are in when listening too it…and I’m still trying to work out what the lyrics mean!!

Favourite Quote: “Know your customers, Know your People, Know your Numbers” – plagiarised from Sir John Harvey Jones when I met him very early on in my career and values I stick to in my business life.