CONEX, strategic partner in the management of SCHEIDER ELECTRIC’s IT customs operations

In terms of transport, SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC is a “shipper”, in other words a company that calls on air, sea or road transporters to take care of the worldwide transit of its products. Concerning customs, the firm falls under the jurisdiction of European regulations: it processes thousands of customs declarations everyday. Bernard DAGUZAN is the group’s expert for all its daily customs operations. SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC was born of the merger between TELEMECHANIQUE and MERLIN GERIN in 1992 (with the transfer of JEUMONT-SCHNEIDER INDUSTRIES to Framatome).

The group provides electrical distribution, secure electrical supplies, building automation and security and industrial control. It produces automatons and specialised robotics among other products. Bernard DAGUZAN has had to oversee a major computerised customs reform which has been necessary in order to complete the total integration of customs operations within the group’s IT governance. “Without our partnership with CONEX, nothing would have been possible,” he affirms.

SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC’s IT governance has been implemented in several stages. Firstly, Bernard DAGUZAN brought back in-house the treatment of simplified customs procedures* in order to automate the process. At this point the company decided to enable its freight forwarder to operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week – a necessity in this activity. “The CONEX software packages helped us in this appropriation phase,” remembers Bernard DAGUZAN. “As the very first customer of CONEX, we fulfilled our part of the contract by performing the beta tests of their updates.”

The integration of MERLIN GERIN’s methods and tools constituted another achievement: the entity MERLIN GERIN had developed its own customs applications, which brutally became obsolete when European borders were opened in 1993. At that time, with the help of CONEX, who had anticipated the European Union’s new customs reality, Bernard DAGUZAN’s corporate management made a successful transition. “CONEX software helped us to avoid any interruption in product management.”
*Simplified customs procedures: these cover the acts of “in-house” customs clearance managed by companies and forwarding agents, in the framework of “single authorisation clearance” or the “express procedure”.

SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC chose the SAP solution, a unifying tool for information systems integrating all company functions. For the group’s corporate customs manager, Bernard DAGUZAN, there was a strategic choice to make: integrate customs procedures into the SAP ERP or preserve the CONEX databases? “My immediate choice was to maintain the CONEX tools,” he explains. The interfacing between the central ERP and the CONEX software packages assured continuity: CONEX knows how to recognise upstream ERP flows. Now, the IT centralisation of the group is supported by 4 export platforms and 2 import platforms.

All the main players in international trade – companies, forwarding agents and IT service providers – are currently experiencing the major overhaul of customs computerised systems. With the arrival of the first DELTA modules on 1 January2007, this revision is vital in France. It’s a time of serious reflection and dialogue for French Customs and its partners. At stake: dematerialisation with the objective of becoming an e-administration in view. “CONEX has thrown all its weight into the negotiations, a driving force in its role as partner to French Customs, in order to favour the establishment of the DELTA C procedure (C for “commun” or full declaration procedures), and the only operational course conceivable.”
SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC’s IT governance externalises its resources: by confiding to CAP GEMINI the maintenance of all the servers around a single database,

the international group is at last reaching the final stage in its rationalisation. For Bernard DAGUZAN, it is the setting up of what he calls the “customs control tour” in Grenoble for exports, a real “surveillance cockpit” for centralised reporting: no more deployments or updates to each of the 5 SCHNEIDER centres of activity spread around France.

In this configuration, CONEX, after 20 years of service for the same client group, has been chosen as the sole customs partner: Alban GRUSON and his team have known how to embrace and anticipate the needs of a company in evolution faced with the enormous technological and regulatory challenges which punctuate the customs activity of a group like SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC.