Trade quoting and tracking platformTrade quoting and tracking platform

PRD rewritten from scratch for publication. The work is real; the client isn't named.

Context

A foreign trade firm with more than three decades of operation: importer and exporter registration, customs brokerage, freight forwarding, supplier sourcing and regulatory consulting.

Two different problems, on the same side of the funnel.

At the top: the real cost of importing is opaque. Someone who has never imported doesn't know that on top of the product price sit freight, insurance, duties, statistical fees, a VAT that is partly recoverable, and a list of local charges that isn't. The first call gets spent explaining that, and people arrive who aren't in a position to operate yet.

At the bottom: once an operation is running, tracking happened over email. The client writes to ask where the cargo is, someone at the firm checks and replies. Multiplied across the active book, that's a fixed operational cost that produces nothing.

The problem

Turn the cost explanation into a tool prospects use on their own, and get shipment tracking out of the inbox.

Scope was split into four modules: the public site, a plan recommender, an import-cost calculator, and an operations tracking platform.

Scope

Plan recommender (3 steps). Three questions — where they are today, how much experience they have buying abroad, how much they plan to invest — and a recommended plan at the end, with the chosen answers summarised as chips. The lead reaches the firm with those three answers attached: the first call starts knowing who's on the other side.

Conversational calculator. A chat interface. The user types what they want to import, from where and in what quantity, in plain language. The system classifies the product and returns the full calculation, in US dollars:

• FOB, estimated international freight and insurance, up to customs value.
• Import duty by classification, statistical fee, and taxable base.
• The taxes paid at clearance, stating explicitly how much of that is recoverable as a tax credit and how much isn't.
• The local charges nobody recovers: terminal, storage, clearance, inland freight.
• The real landed cost, and the cost per unit.

All of it flagged as an estimate, with the assumptions behind the calculation on screen and a quote ID so an advisor can pick it up.

Separating recoverable from sunk cost is what makes the number decidable.

Tracking platform. A portal with two firmly separated roles. The firm's team creates and manages operations; the client logs in to read and download, with no edit rights at all. Each operation moves through seven fixed states: at origin, shipped, in transit, arrived, in customs, released, delivered.

Prototype screens

Public

1. Home — two separate paths out of the hero: "I want to start importing" goes to the recommender, "quote your import" goes to the calculator. They never merge.
2. Plan recommender — stepped flow with a progress bar, result, and contact capture.
3. Calculator — conversation, cost breakdown, assumptions, and a request for a formal quote.

Platform

4. Admin control panel — summary cards, a table of every operation with filters by state, client and date range, and the entry point for creating a new one.
5. Client operations list — their own operations only, with state, dates and available documents.
6. Client operation detail — the flagship screen: a timeline across the seven states, operation data, downloadable documents and related alerts.
7. Create and edit operation (admin) — data entry, state changes and attachments.
8. Client alert inbox — updates per operation, in-app and over WhatsApp.

What it excludes

• GPS or live map tracking: shipments are followed by state, not by position.
• Online payments, invoicing, collections or accounting integration.
• Document upload or editing by the client: they are read-only on their own operations.
• Internal chat between client and firm.
• Multi-language support and local-currency pricing: the calculator works entirely in US dollars.
• The calculator's parameter backoffice (rates and classifications): that's a separate internal module.