Publican Uses AI to Help Customs Brokers Generate Import Documentation
Meghan Hall
5 min read
As a global trade war takes root, one company is confident its technology can take on the challenge of import documentation.
Publican Trade Solutions is bringing artificial intelligence and automation to some custom brokers’ standard workflows with its new product, Publican World.
The company has launched it as part of a partnership with the International Association of Professional Customs Brokers (ASAPRA) to help brokers throughout the world achieve higher levels of accuracy and more ironclad compliance with global trade regulations.
Publican’s Ram Ben Tzion said Trump’s “America First” tariff agenda, paired with geopolitical uncertainty in regions all over the world, makes now the right time to launch the workflow automation solution.
“Everything is changing quickly, unpredictably, and [it’s] putting a lot of economic operators, companies, importers, brokers in a chaotic situation whereby, even if they want to remain compliant, it’s nearly impossible,” he told Sourcing Journal. “If you are doing today what you did last year, you must be doing something wrong. This is why the timing for this offering is compelling…because more and more operators, more and more players need to change their customs brokerage game, because the customs reality has changed.”
To use Publican World, a customs broker imports their customer’s bill of lading and invoice into the system, which pulls data from those documents and automatically uses that information to generate the necessary documentation for importing goods. That process takes only a few minutes, but to do it manually without the help of AI would take hours, or in more complicated cases, multiple days, for a broker to complete.
Ben Tzion said he first met the president of ASAPRA at a conference in Brazil, where the two agreed that customs brokering processes needed some overhauling. With Publican’s proprietary data sets and technological prowess, the two organizations have brought that partnership to life, beta testing Publican World over the course of the past several months with some of the trade group’s 40,000 members. To date, Publican has primarily worked with government agencies; this will be the product’s first major foray into the private sector.
But Ben Tzion said the breadth of knowledge Publican has about governments gives it an edge against other technology companies deploying trade solutions today. Publican World uses an automated connection to each of the world’s customs agencies to give users a dynamic dashboard that takes into account the ever-changing official records at each of those agencies.
“We have the ability to automatically be up to date with the current tariff agreements [and] requirements, because they constantly change,” he said. “And, on the other hand, we have the automated capabilities to classify, validate and check everything, saving a lot of labor or manual processes.”
Publican’s past work with governments also help it to alert customs brokers to which type of transactions require more in-depth attention from a human broker—whether it’s because a company has previously been sanctioned by a certain jurisdiction, has been caught violating trade policies or otherwise.
“We are bringing the wealth of our knowledge and experience from the government segment to the benefit of our enterprise commercial customers,” he explained, noting that automating more run-of-the-mill shipments will free customs brokers up to focus manual efforts on complex transactions like these, or on high-value shipments with sensitive goods.
Ben Tzion said he believes the biggest gains brokerages will see when using Publican World comes from those more mundane, standard transactions.
“I think that the biggest value proposition or contribution of technology that we’re bringing is to the massive scale, mass production items that today don’t necessarily get the time and attention of professionals,” he said, noting that fashion and consumer goods are often included in that bucket.
But after years in the business, he’s also not naïve to the fact that sometimes, brokers encounter issues on what, at first, appear to be simple shipments. Publican World is trained to bring brokers’ attention directly to those concerns, regardless of the size of the shipment.
“We will highlight any decision that is required—if there is a mismatch in details, if something doesn’t make sense, if we suspect that there are origin issues, if we know there is additional certification [needed],” he said.
Ben Tzion said, globally, he expects the overall number of shipments requiring clearance to increase. That could be because of changing rules on existing trade regulations like the U.S.’s de minimis exception, which remains in limbo under President Donald Trump, or because of consumers’ penchant for e-commerce transactions paired with complex global supply chains.
Regardless of the reasons for the projected uptick in shipments with clearance requirements, Ben Tzion said Publican World will see brokers more prepared to attack that influx head on.
“A customs broker today is able to handle, on average, between 2.4 to nine shipments a day. If they can do 50, there will be demand for it, because the overall number of shipments that require clearance is expected to grow,” he said.
Ben Tzion and his team have spent months testing and having conversations with ASAPRA members to make the product feel as if it fits naturally into a broker’s daily obligations. He said Publican wants to “complement that [work], not override it.”
The founder did not directly disclose whether he plans to expand Publican World into other geographies—or, if so, how soon such a release might come. For now, he said, he’s focused on serving the tool’s early clients to give them the best possible experience with emerging technology.
“[Despite] the trade war and tariffs, there are legitimate business owners that want to remain compliant and make sure that they can continue focusing on doing business,” he said. “We have politicians with their agendas; we have consumers that are price sensitive and worried. But in between, there is an economic environment that just wants to keep doing business.”
