Esmail Arshad
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TLS Technology · Supply Chain Operations Manager · 2023

Building a compliant operating model for EMEA expansion

An order for Bahrain arrived with no local importing setup behind it. I led a ten-person cross-functional team to build the importer-of-record, customs, documentation and fulfilment processes the market needed, then made the model repeatable across EMEA.

IOR · Customs · Freight forwarding · Compliance · SOPs · KPI management

Team
10 people across operations, research, sales and account management
Expansion
10 IOR partners onboarded across two quarters
Outcome
12% growth in EMEA market share

Assess and select

  1. 01 New customer order or target market Bahrain was the first, with no local importing setup in place
  2. 02 Country requirements assessment importer need, customs, duties and taxes, certifications, restricted goods
  3. 03 IOR sourcing vendor identification, RFQs, geographic coverage, commercial comparison
  4. 04 Due diligence capabilities, compliance, documentation, references

Operate and control

  1. 05 Partner onboarding rates, responsibilities, SOPs, escalation paths
  2. 06 Shipment execution IOR, customs broker, freight forwarder and internal operations
  3. 07 Performance control fulfilment KPIs, customs holds, exception review

Re-entered for each new EMEA market, with country requirements reassessed every time.

10 IOR partners onboarded over two quarters · 12% EMEA market-share growth

Bahrain became the first use case for a market-entry process that could be repeated across additional EMEA countries.

Challenge

TLS was expanding ICT and data-centre hardware sales across EMEA, and every new market brought its own rules on importing, customs documentation, duties, product certifications and restricted goods.

A Bahrain order made the gap concrete. There was no reliable local importer-of-record structure behind it, and no process that would stop the next country from becoming the same problem again.

What I did

  1. Led a ten-person cross-functional team, splitting responsibilities across operations analysts, regional research analysts, sales and key account management by role and expertise.
  2. Owned the IOR onboarding workflow end to end — vendor identification, RFQs, coverage, service assessment, due diligence, commercial negotiation, compliance validation and trial-shipment readiness.
  3. Established country-specific compliance protocols covering shipping and customs documentation, physical-document requirements, duties and taxes, HS-code considerations, certifications and restricted-goods rules.
  4. Standardized the workflow across internal and external stakeholders, defining responsibilities and SOPs for IOR partners, customs brokers, freight forwarders, operations analysts and account teams.
  5. Built performance controls around execution, tracking fulfilment KPIs and customs-related delays, reviewed in weekly team meetings and monthly performance sessions.

Decision

Rather than treat each new country as a one-off customs problem, I built a repeatable market-entry process — IOR selection, country requirements, documentation, execution and performance control — that the next market could run through.

Outcome

Over two quarters the team onboarded 10 IOR partners and established a repeatable fulfilment and compliance model for EMEA.

That let TLS enter and service additional markets in the region, and grew EMEA market share by 12% against the company’s position before the expansion effort.

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