Import management system

A collaborative platform that connects COMEX, Treasury, and Marketing in a single lifecycle: research, purchase, import, payments, and receiving.

The client

An Argentine company that designs, manufactures, and sells several lines of physical product for the local market. A large part of its operation depends on imports from Asia: researching suppliers, negotiating terms, coordinating international payments, and receiving goods on time to sell them.

Under a confidentiality agreement with the client, neither the company name nor the system name is mentioned, and screenshots were anonymized.

The problem

Imports were managed with Excel spreadsheets and in-person coordination at the office. As the volume of operations grew over the last two years, that setup no longer scaled:

• Negotiations with suppliers (minimum quantities, payment methods, ports) lived in files and scattered conversations
• Treasury had no advance visibility of committed money: what had to be paid and when
• Marketing found out which products were arriving when they were already about to land, with no time to prepare the commercial launch

One detail that says a lot: the head of foreign trade, who knows how to code, had tried to build this tool on his own as a personal project. When the volume of the business made it essential to systematize the process, the company contacted me to turn that vision into a finished product.

The solution

The system covers the full lifecycle of an import, with a dedicated panel for each area:

1. Research (COMEX). A research ticket opens the investigation of a product or series of products: multiple suppliers and purchase formats are consulted (minimum quantities, payment methods, ports), and each negotiation is recorded until the deal is closed with the chosen supplier.

2. Purchase and import (COMEX). Closing the research creates an order. Another user formalizes the purchase with the supplier and tracks it by status: draft, in production, in transit, in customs, delivered, held, or cancelled.

3. Payments (Treasury). Each order has multiple payments during its lifecycle. From its own panel, Treasury sees the money committed over time: what has to be paid, to whom, and when — without depending on someone remembering to say so.

4. Receiving and sales (Marketing). When an order is about to arrive, Marketing can already look up spec sheets, images, and product information to prepare the commercial launch in advance.

The cycle is completed by: a product catalog, a supplier registry with contacts, document management (on suppliers and products), and an internal alerts and notifications system — messages between users, reminders, and assignees per order — that replaced a large part of the in-person coordination.

The result

• 93 operations managed in the system: 77 delivered, 13 in transit, and new ones in preparation
• International payments of thousands of dollars recorded and planned on the platform
• 169 products and 22 suppliers centralized with their documentation
• 3 areas connected (COMEX, Treasury, and Marketing) working from the same information in real time
• Treasury knows committed money in advance; Marketing prepares the commercial launch before the goods arrive

First version in production in ~6 months; the system kept growing with new features from real use.