Import management system

A connected path to research, buy, pay, and prepare the sale, without passing the information from person to person.

The client

An Argentine company that designs, manufactures, and sells physical products for the local market. A large part of the operation depends on imports: researching suppliers, coordinating payments, and receiving goods in time to sell them.

Under a confidentiality agreement, neither the company name nor the system name is mentioned. The screenshots are anonymized.

What was happening

Imports were handled with spreadsheets and coordination at the office. When the volume grew, that setup was no longer enough:

• Negotiations with suppliers lived in files and loose conversations
• Treasury could not see ahead of time what had to be paid, and when
• Marketing learned which products were arriving when they were about to arrive

The person in charge of foreign trade had tried to build a tool on their own. When a finished system was needed, the company asked me to complete it.

What we implemented

Research. A product or a series opens an investigation. Suppliers and terms are compared, and the negotiation stays on record until one supplier is chosen.

Foreign trade. Closing the research creates an order. Someone else formalizes the purchase and follows it by status: draft, in production, in transit, in customs, delivered, held, or cancelled.

Treasury. Each order has several payments. Treasury sees the money committed: what has to be paid, to whom, and when, without waiting for a message.

Marketing. When an order is about to arrive, marketing can already look up specs, images, and product information to prepare the sale.

There is also a catalog, suppliers, documents, and internal notices between the people responsible for each order.

What changed

Research, foreign trade, and treasury work from the same information. Each area can look up what it needs to move forward.