Navigating Global Trade Waters
P.J. Jakovljevic - May 11, 2005

Introduction

Companies involved with global and transnational trade need management processes to navigate compliancy, regulations, and other trade issues specific to the countries they are trading with. This is a daunting task, not only because of the copious amounts of information and regulation but also because trading companies are held accountable for non-compliance. Typically supply chain management solutions (SCM) and enterprise resource planning solutions (ERP) lack strong international logistics and global trade management (GTM) capabilities. In light of this over sight, the merger between JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. (NYSE: JPM), a leading global financial services firm and Vastera (NASDAQ: VAST), a public global trade solutions provider, is looked upon with great interest. Supplementing JPMorgan Chase's financial services with Vastera's global trade management software will likely make JPMorgan Chase the first financial institution to offer a complete set of integrated cash, trade, and logistics solutions across the physical and financial supply chain...