Company

The Ingram Micro Distribution GmbH is the German branch of Ingram Micro Inc., a global leader in technology distribution and supply chain services headquartered in Irvine, California. The company provides a wide range of products and service portfolios to resellers, system integrators, and other IT market participants.

Challenge

In the area of customs and trade compliance, Ingram Micro faced a complex and resource-intensive task: Classifying approximately 1,250 new items each month. The relevant product characteristics had to be manually extracted from product data sheets or public sources and interpreted — a process that could take up to 30 minutes per item.

Especially challenging: The interpretation of the product data was highly dependent on the respective processor. This led to inconsistent results, making the standardization of customs classification difficult, and was therefore prone to errors and costly.

Solution

The implementation of traide AI fundamentally revamped the entire customs classification process. Today, the platform handles automated extraction of relevant core product data, enabling a standardized and traceable customs classification — independent of the individual processor.

traide AI excels not only through the correct matching of the appropriate tariff numbers but also through transparent decision-making foundations: The steps of customs classification are explained in detail based on GRI 1–6 — including explanatory notes and chapter notes from the Harmonized System.

traide AI in three words:
"supportive | helpful | effective"
– Paul Terre, Senior Manager Trade Compliance & Customs

Results

The impact on daily work is significant:

• Reduction of classification time from approximately 30 minutes to 5-8 minutes per item

• Up to 80% fast lane share — meaning direct acceptance of the AI suggestion without manual reworking

• Significant standardization of the process, minimizing internal discussions and rework

• Saving the equivalent of about half an employee through automation

• Increased compliance and traceability with customs authorities

Why traide AI?

Paul Terre and his team chose traide AI for several reasons:

• The high quality of results provided by the AI

• The transparent justification of each classification step (including detailed explanation and listing of classification steps using GRI 1-6)

• The seamless integration into existing core data management

• The flexibility and clarity in handling complex product categories

Conclusion

“By implementing traide AI, we have significantly accelerated, standardized, and improved the quality of our classification process in the harmonized system — traide AI enables consistent and automated classification based on structured product data.”

– Paul Terre, Senior Manager Trade Compliance & Customs, Ingram Micro

With traide AI, Ingram Micro has transformed a lengthy, manual, and subjective process into a modern, AI-supported solution. Today, the platform is an integral part of the customs department — not just for increasing efficiency, but also as a reliable partner for quality, transparency, and standardization.