# Move a cross-border order from quote to delivery without the email chain.

A trading company moves goods across borders on orders that pass through suppliers, a bank, a forwarder and an insurer. The system is drawn to carry each order through all of them as one record, and to leave every step that moves money or commits the company to a buyer for a person to close.

Domain: Trade and logistics
Label: Designed

## Architecture

- **Intake**: A buyer’s request becomes one order record: product, quantity, terms and destination.
- **Supplier checks**: Certificates, inspection and the supplier’s documents are gathered and checked against the order.
- **Payment**: Escrow or a letter of credit is prepared, with the documents the bank asks for drawn from the order.
- **Shipping**: Booking and shipping papers are prepared, and each milestone moves the order forward.
- **Claims**: A short or damaged delivery opens a claim with the order’s evidence already attached.
- **Operations view**: Every open order, the step it waits on, and who it waits for.

Boundary (a person closes): Nothing that moves money, confirms an order to a buyer or accepts a supplier happens until a person closes it.

## Scope

Mapped the order path with the company across every workflow an order touches, and drew the system and its boundary.

Not built for the company, and not running. The demo on this page is ours, on synthetic orders.

## Anonymized

The company, its markets, products, counterparties, channels and figures are left out. Every order in the demo is synthetic.

## The situation

Each order is an email chain. The buyer asks, the supplier quotes, the bank wants documents, the forwarder wants a booking, and the only place all of it meets is somebody’s inbox. Where an order stands is whatever the last message says.

Years of supplier and buyer relationships live in chat threads that only the people who wrote them know how to read. When a shipment stalls, the first sign is usually the buyer asking where it is.

## What the design settles

This system is designed, not running, so what follows is what the design decides, not a result.

- The order record replaces the email chain as the place an order’s state lives.
- Which steps a person closes, and which the system prepares and carries.
- What each party needs from the company at each step, and where it comes from.
- What the team sees first each morning: the orders at risk, and why.

## Demo

[Open the demo](https://octyn.co/casestudies/trade-order-desk/demo)

## Related

- [Operations systems](https://octyn.co/systems/operations)
- [Put each participant’s full context in front of their counsellor.](https://octyn.co/casestudies/participant-context/demo)
- [The Consult](https://octyn.co/consult)

Canonical: https://octyn.co/casestudies/trade-order-desk