Thoughts On Working At Large Companies

Dear Import/Export Compliance Manager,

I manage the Trade Compliance Department of a company with around $200 million in annual revenue.  We try our best but we are understaffed and have crummy systems.  I attribute this to our smaller size.    Surely at least the super large companies have their acts together, right?  Give me some hope!

Mid-Sized in Metairie

Dear Mid-Sized,

That sound you hear right now is the sound of all the import/export compliance people working at companies with at least $1 billion in annual revenue laughing in unison. 

(waiting for the laughter to subside)

OK, let’s talk about some things.  The simple answer, as you’ve gathered, is that just because a company is large and financially successful doesn’t necessarily mean that it does a good or even sufficient job on the import/export compliance front.  Let’s walk through some of the realities of life at extremely large companies, shall we?

First of all, as summed up by The Notorious B.I.G., who probably wasn’t referring to import/export compliance, “Mo’ money, mo’ problems.”  While you are concerned about your 300 order a day volume, that super large company you’re thinking about is dealing with 80,000 a day.  While you are concerned with getting the engineers across the parking lot to provide basic data on new products under development, your counterparts at super large companies have entire divisions located around the world that they have to worry about what’s going on.  And if you think you have problems with technical types like chemists boxing up something nasty and shipping it on their own via FedEx, imagine working for a company with so many employees you’re not even sure where all of them are.  Sure, your counterparts at super large companies may have much larger departments but that’s necessary for the amount of work that needs to be done.

Secondly, it can be a lot more difficult to get things done at larger companies.  At large companies, there are usually multiple layers of bureaucracy to navigate through in order to get changes enacted.  Whereas at small companies it’s more likely you can walk over to the Director of Legal’s desk to ask for approval of a project or plead your case, there’s a much smaller likelihood you’re going to have the same access to the same person in a large company, even if you’re fortunate enough to be able to contact them directly.  It may take six months just to find out that your initiative wasn’t approved.  You are also more likely to encounter upstreaming where a change to your system requires approval of other departments such as Finance or Engineering because it affects their systems (which may not talk to yours very well, having been so ‘customized’ over the years).  At small companies, stereotypically, it is so much easier to effect change and there is not such a ‘turning the battleship’ problem.

Thirdly, people who work at uber-large companies are regular people just like you and me.  They’re not blessed with superhuman capacity to ensure import/export compliance; they have the same issues that you do importing into Brazil and China, getting salespeople to provide accurate information for export licenses and suppliers to provide sufficient information for free trade agreement certificates.  Import/export compliance personnel at large companies may still encounter the same personnel-related problems that you do with getting people to respond to e-mails, buy-in and understanding from senior management, etc.  The problems they encounter are likely the exact same problems you have, just on a larger scale. 

These companies may have more personnel at their disposal.  They may have better systems in place.  They may have access to white shoe law fims and familiar names as outside counsel, they may have lobbyists on retainer in Washington, D.C., their CEO may have met with the President of the United States and they may be a household name who regularly are mentioned in the news; that doesn’t mean their import/export compliance program is more effective than yours.  So many factors go into whether the import/export compliance program is good or not; you absolutely cannot judge compliance success by a company’s size.

So next time you run into an import/export compliance professional from a large company, don’t be envious: commiserate!