Value chain: Research and development

Companies with global operations and international networks are increasingly benefiting from the advantages of international R&D teams. This trend is evident with large international groups and also more and more with small and medium-sized companies.
 
The extended engineering diversity which can give a company better development results, however, is also subject to higher requirements in the individual legal areas. This makes it necessary to consider the strategic objectives of the product range from the point of view of foreign trade, whereby the evaluation of prototypes and pre-series are subject to their own criteria and the networking of the R&D teams has to be viewed separately, etc..
 
The following is an overview of the most important challenges faced by R&D projects: 

• Customs: Correct evaluation of goods at the development stage
• Export controls: Cross-border R&D teams with different nationalities
• Preferences: Cost reductions to increase competitiveness through use of low cost sources
• Procedural master data: Provision of foreign trade data by technical departments