Customs & Prometeus network
How Prometeus Labs Will Help Entrepreneurs To Take Right Decisions In External Trade
How customs data analysis prevented the loss of 50,000 euros
Here is the simple and clear story told by Olga Kolodina, CEO of one of the Russian wholesale companies:
“We recently signed a contract with a Chinese animal feed supplier. The amount of the contract was 50,000 euros. What shock did I experience when I saw the customs statistics. There I discovered that the Chinese deliver to our competitors the same goodies but at a price several times lower than ours.” says Colodina. “I sent my employees to the shops. We found that the competitors had already managed to put the goods on the shelves and did it at a price of 1 euro per one package of Chinese animal feed. In the same time, we would have to put the goods at 2.5 euro per piece. I would just burn my 50,000 euros! I quickly terminated the contract with the Chinese, although I paid a fine. As a result, thanks to customs statistics, I made a deal directly with the feed producer. The price was three times lower — even lower than my competitors have.”
Where does the customs statistics come from?
Data on foreign trade transactions, cargoes, declarations are collected centrally by customs services from customs posts. That huge file that is formed, professionals call raw materials. In this form, these data are not interesting to marketers or business. This information is too large, fragmented and complicated to understand.
The role of customs data enrichers is played by business consulters and market researchers, who buy raw data from customs services to enrich it. Usually after enriching the customs data is look like an excel table with several positions. The most simple of them:
- Name, address and country of the sender;
- Name, address and country of the recipient;
- The consignment invoice value;
- The consignment statistical value;
- Lot volume in physical units (pieces, kilograms, litres);
- Date of customs clearance;
- Name and country of producer of goods;
- Description of the consignment;
- CN FEA code.
Then, enrichers produce segmentation by industry or products, ports or countries, etc. Now it is clear information with the help of which everybody will be able to estimate any specific market, check his pricing, find a new supplier or new buyer. Due to this enriched data, the entrepreneur can minimize risks and make informed decisions on how to increase his business.
External trade is a game of huge scope with the largest prizes to its winners! But risks exporters and importers face are great: How not to miscalculate the price? How not to conclude an unprofitable contract? Where to find a reliable supplier? Who else to deliver the goods to? What is more profitable to trade? How to increase your market share? To answer correctly to these questions business needs reliable sources of information. So rose market of customs information and statistics. And it has big problems. Today there are too many misleading information and intermediaries in this market. The customs data vendors usually specialize in one country and know nothing about other countries. Also, they always have the unfriendly confusing interface. In total, it is very difficult to choose a company from which to buy customs statistics — the risk of error will be too grand and too expensive. As a result, small and medium-sized businesses don’t take the opportunity to scan customs statistics.
The Prometeus solution
Prometeus Labs can remove all barriers on the way of the customs data market. Our team developed a secure and decentralized ecosystem, that serves as an infrastructure for gathering, validating, processing, enriching, and selling customs data.
In Prometeus network, every external sale company, customs service or customs post may be a data owner. They sell their data in the form of database of customs declarations, suppliers or vendors. Data owner upload it in an unlimited format directly to the Prometeus blockchain network nodes through the validator with a user-friendly interface. All information will be encrypted by the private key. Only the data buyer will receive the second key. Now the data is safe, nobody will be able to steal it. But everybody, including data enrichers, sees this data in the form of metadata in the datamart — it is like a virtual shop.
The role of customs data enrichers in Prometeus network will be played by business consulters and market researchers. They buy the raw data from data owners and enrich it by AI and machine learning. Encrypted enriched data (statistics by goods or countries, analysis reports, insights) in the form of metadata is put up for sale in the same datamart. Every enricher in Prometeus network will have its own rating, which dynamically increases or falls depending on the quality of data enriched by him. Tricks or fraud are impossible here.
All deals are making though user-friendly datamart by impartial smart-contracts. Every transaction is recorded in a distributed ledger. Data owner or data enricher always will see online who and when is buying their data. These records cannot be rolled back or faked.
At last, data buyers, including small and medium-sized businesses, will get a convenient and reliable instrument to buy customs information from the best data vendors.
Be with us. Read about other Prometeus network use-cases in our next articles.
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