Read about it in The Journal of Commerce Online HERE.
Read about it in The American Journal of Transportation HERE.

April 2004-

TradePoint's FDA Prior Notice Software Significantly Outperforms Industry Average

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently issued its initial Compliance Summary Information: Prior Notice with regard to the Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2002 (Bioterrorism Act - BTA). Advance or prior notice of import shipments to the US allows the FDA, with the support of the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (CBP), to target import inspections more effectively and help protect the nation's food supply against terrorist acts and other public health emergencies. The FDA's first posting of information describes Prior Notice (PN) submissions received during the first two months (through February 21, 2004) after the interim final rule went into effect December 12, 2003. It provides a high level summary of the current pattern of submissions and identifies areas of concern, not the least of which is the significant number (more than half) of the total lines submitted through CBP's ACS system with incomplete PN information. Other submissions had some, but not all of the PN information required, and a few lacked any of the specific PN information.

In light of the startling statistics published by the FDA, TradePoint Systems conducted a random sampling of shipments for its own FDA BTA Prior Notice software system users for the same date range (12/12/03 through 02/21/04) as published by the FDA. TradePoint sampled approximately 21,000 shipments of its software users and found only an 8.15% rejection rate, indicating a significantly better performance for TradePoint customers than the import industry at large. TradePoint sampled an additional 17,000 customer shipments from 02/22/04 through 04/16/04 and found that the rejection rate steadily declined to only 0.17%. These positive results can be attributed to the enhancements TradePoint has added to its FDA PN processing software, resolution of CBP issues, and the fact that TradePoint's customers have become more familiar and comfortable processing the PN data.

"My hat's off to the TradePoint organization for delivering a viable FDA BTA integrated system timely and in an efficient manor", said Roger Clarke, President, Williams Clarke Company, Inc. "The installation was smooth and the operational software worked effectively straight out of the chute with a minimal amount of transmission problems."

TradePoint Systems was one of the few software providers ready and fully compliant with the FDA BTA initiative by the required date. TradePoint was among the first with the "WP' addition to this requirement. TradePoint was also the only software provider present at the CBP & NCBFAA review of the final changes before the BTA release.

"Rather than simply adding the basic functionality necessary for submission of the FDA Prior Notice data as required, we took a step back to evaluate what else we could possibly include in the software to make this requirement easier for our customers to manage", said Joe Cowan, Vice President at TradePoint Systems. "Some enhancements included adding the PN data to the parts database, so the information is pulled through to minimize data entry requirements and errors. We also added validations and edits to ensure our customers had low error rates, and we incorporated the ability to track and monitor what PN's have been submitted and confirmed. Plus we included the ability to delay transmission of PN data to meet the submission timelines established for the various modes of transportation."

"We will continue to work every step of the way with the FDA and CBP to ensure that our customers are ready in advance with all mandated changes", said Ken Halle, Chief Operating Officer at TradePoint Systems. "We pride ourselves on our customer's successes with some of the lowest error rates in the industry. TradePoint will remain at the forefront of all new programs associated with ACE, AES and C-TPAT."

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