Global trade management technology provider Amber Road (formerly known as Management Dynamics) recently announced it has opened up a Munich, Germany-based office, which will play a key role as its EMEA (Europe, the Middle East, and Africa) headquarters.
Company officials said that strong demand for its GTM services in Europe has served as the impetus for their growth in these regions, adding that Amber Road has full-time sales, pre-sales, marketing services and technical support in Europe, with several staffers based out of the Munich office. This office currently has ten staffers with plans to double this number over the forthcoming 12 months, according to Rick Meyer, vice president of sales, Europe, for Amber Road.
“While we’ve seen continued growth from our sales offices in the UK, Netherlands and Switzerland, Germany has played a significant role as a leader in global trade,” said Meyer. “Germany is one of the world’s leading export countries – establishing our European headquarters in Munich helps us centralize support resources for the European sales offices, while enabling specific sales support for Germany. Munich was chosen for its location, skills availability and proximity to many of our larger corporate clients, such as Infineon, Siemens and Osram.”
This office will provide European Implementation and support services, European marketing services and German sales personnel to complement the existing sales offices.
In terms of the biggest benefit of this new office, Meyer noted that aside from the central location for corporate events and customer training, the ability to provide European support and implementation services is a major plus to its existing services portfolio. In addition, he said the availability of skilled trade professionals is another welcome factor.
“Our clients expect a high degree of trade knowledge and experience from our staff,” he explained. “Germany and Munich in particular, has a wealth of talent from which we can draw and our European customers can benefit.”
When asked how European shippers are leveraging global trade and technology to improve supply chain and logistics operations, Meyer said that European customers, like their U.S. counterparts, are faced with increased compliance and governance challenges. In particular, he said, they are improving their focus on the legal aspects of global trade, such as sanctions, embargoes, and export / import controls, end use management and restricted party screening.
“By complying not only with European rules but also with target markets regulations, European companies are also seeing the benefits of compliance, such as origin management and leveraging free trade agreements, which can yield significant savings,” he explained.