Pre-event costing now an essential business tool

THE RAPIDLY changing world of business has raised the barr in terms of electronic solutions demands. “There are dramatic changes in exchange rates, and oil prices going through the roof,” says Compu Clearing chairman Arnold Garber. “It’s not a very steady world economy, and there is lots of competitiveness in chasing the increasing volumes of world trade” This, he added, is a situation where any mistakes by an importer can be very costly. The days of working by “gut feel” and post-event costing of orders have gone. “Now,” said Garber, “an importer needs to have preevent costing if he intends to avoid possible disaster” – with Compu-Clearing one of the few suppliers of the latest pre-event costing programmes. “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail,” Garber added. “And pre-event costing is really just that – planning. So, even if things don’t work according to plan, it’ll still be closer than if you didn’t plan at all.” In the future, the already-noticeable lack of skilled staff is going to see an ever-greater move into information technology as an alternative. “If you don’t have automation,” said Garber, “you won’t survive in what is now a competitively cutthroat freight industry.”