Customer success story
Combining human expertise, data and technology to create unmatched customs brokerage solutions
Founded in 1980, Kizilkaya Customs Brokerage is one of Turkey’s leading international brokerage companies, providing a full spectrum of value-added services through its brokerage and consultancy activities. In the brokerage domain, the company offers export and import customs services, transit regime services, port transit operations, and inward and outward processing regime regulation services, among others. Kizilkaya is also a trusted advisor on national and international legislation and provides specialised training to businesses on customs requirements and certifications.
Armed with critical quality, safety, security, and anti-bribery certifications, Kizilkaya qualifies as one of Turkey’s most preferred customs brokerage houses. Its ISO 9001 certification ensures world-class quality management, and the ISO 27001 standard assures the best-managed information security. Additionally, the TRACE and ISO 37001 standards conform to anti-bribery management best practices1.
Kizilkaya has ingrained innovation into its culture and strives continuously to benchmark new service standards for the customs broker community.
Customs brokerage has traditionally been a bureaucratic and complex undertaking. Before initiating any export and import activity, customers, typically large multinational organisations, like to be informed about the current customs duties, including preferential and additional duties, tariff schedules, and regulatory intelligence on controls and documents of the destination country. This information is often only available in the native language in disparate systems and across multiple websites. Sourcing and synthesising the data demands significant time and effort, and there is always the risk of it being incomplete or outdated.
Kizilkaya was acutely aware of their customer’s pain points. They recognised that the pace of regulatory change and convergence in international business warranted the digitalisation of legacy processes. The company became determined to offer a one-stop solution with the latest and the most accurate regulatory trade data from around the globe. Considering the enormity and complexity, a local software provider would not measure up to this daunting task. So Kizilkaya selected Thomson Reuters as its technology partner as it set out on a digital transformation mission.
Before switching to digital, the Kizilkaya team found it challenging and time-consuming to source detailed regulatory information for their customers. With ONESOURCE Global Trade Content, the company can now instantly provide its customers with reliable global regulatory intelligence, enabling them to overcome administrative hurdles and lower compliance risks.
Case in point, one of Kizilkaya’s customers in Algeria, struggled to find a mandatory document to export to Nigeria. They had called various offices, done extensive website research and made multiple phone calls to locate this document but had no success.
Kizilkaya team entered the harmonized commodity (HS) code and destination country into ONESOURCE and instantly provided their customer with the necessary documentation. Thus, information that would have taken days to access was provided in minutes.
The company’s partnership with ONESOURCE Global Trade has completely transformed its operations to be more responsive to customers. A digitally enabled Kizilkaya can now access reliable regulatory information with just a few clicks.
- From a central repository, Kizilkaya can fulfil any customs information requests for any country or region with speed and accuracy. As an illustration, Turkey being an important EU trade partner, obtaining the Binding Tariff Information (BTI) for any product in the EU has now become very easy for regional exports and imports. The company can also quickly identify and recommend the trade lanes that offer the lowest duty and low-risk transit pathways.
- As regulations can change at any time with or without notice, Thomson Reuters’ worldwide network of trade compliance experts works 24/7 to ensure country-specific information is up to date. Further, the Kizilkaya team has complete visibility and traceability of information throughout the trade process and can provide their customers with the standard documents they will need in destination countries.
- Language barriers can cause confusion and costly delays. ONESOURCE stores customs data in the native language and English, so customers never have to worry about the risk of mistranslating local regulations. Kizilkaya can reference 210+ tariff schedules in English and the native language in a central database.
Kizilkaya’s medium-term vision is pivoted on its transformed digital capabilities and planned expansion. The company is already a market leader in Turkey, and by synergizing its growth strategy with the power of ONESOURCE, it aims to deepen its footprint across Europe.
Future-ready organisations view external partners as extensions of themselves and are motivated by shared success. With the EU and euro area economies expected to rebound strongly, Kizilkaya and Thomson Reuters are excited to further strengthen their strategic partnership in coming years.
