Panjiva releases new application for sourcing

Panjiva, an online search engine with detailed information on global suppliers and manufacturers, has announced the availability of “Trendspotting,” the latest in the company’s line of intelligence applications for sourcing teams.

On the eve of today’s launch, Panjiva CEO Josh Green told SCMR in an exclusive interview that the tool would help shippers slice through a great deal of existing complexity in the U.S. Census Bureau.

“Anyone who has labored through Harmonized Tariff Schedule (HTS) codes to drill down to transactional information will understand,” he said. “It can be a daunting experience for veteran traders.”

Green noted that despite an increasingly global business environment, sourcing executives still have little direction or resources to identify which geographies in which to do business.

According to Green, Trendspotting intelligently sorts and organizes complicated U.S. Census Bureau data to solve this challenge by presenting an intelligent view of which countries or regions regularly export a particular item.
“For example,” he said, “We can provide numbers of apparel shippers who might favor one Gulf port over another. That news can really help with making a ocean carrier booking decision.”

Trendspotting facilitates this critical first step in the sourcing process and integrates with Panjiva Search to enable users to identify specific suppliers within a matter of clicks.

“Panjiva is building the go-to search engine for sourcing teams by capitalizing on opportunities to make powerful—yet underutilized—data more accessible,” said Brad Cater, lead developer of Panjiva Trendspotting.
“Panjiva has already tapped Customs data to provide insight into specific suppliers; now, we’re using Census data to examine the macro trends shaping global trade where those suppliers operate.”

The U.S. Census Bureau assigns a 10-digit HTS code to categorize and track all goods shipped internationally. This information provides valuable intelligence for companies looking to identify the best regions in which to do business, but until now, it was hard to navigate and required in-depth domain expertise.

Trendspotting integrates this Census data on a monthly basis, translates its HTS codes into everyday language and allows users to search for a specific item or related groups of items (e.g. wool sweaters or apparel).
The results provide insight into the countries that regularly export a particular good, any changes to those countries’ market shares over time, and a view by country of the dollar value of those goods.

Additional features can be found on the company’s website: http://www.panjiva.com

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