When I stepped into an organisation as head of compliance, I knew I wasn’t inheriting a clean slate. I was inheriting complexity. Our business operated across four major regions; the United States, Europe, Australia, and China, each governed by its own set of regulations, cultural expectations, and business practices. The company had grown rapidly through acquisitions and international expansion, but while the business evolved, the compliance infrastructure had been left behind.
There was no unified strategy. Instead, we had a patchwork of regional solutions stitched together by manual workarounds and the sheer determination of individuals doing their best in the absence of a system. There was no global oversight, no coordinated governance. One team might be scrambling to handle an audit while another overpaid duty just to avoid shipping delays. The lack of visibility at the executive level meant silent financial risks were accumulating; leakages from customs duties, VAT, and broker fees that no one was tracking globally.
From the outset, I knew we had a choice to either continue firefighting, or build something fundamentally better.
I began by mapping the landscape, connecting with teams across regions to understand what was really happening on the ground. The inconsistencies were stark. Customs processes varied not just by country, but sometimes for the same product category. In some places, trade compliance was treated as a reactive function, in others, as a legal formality. And everywhere, people were working hard, but not always working in sync.
What I saw wasn’t just room for improvement, it was a business case for transformation.
The question I posed was simple. If we were building a global trade compliance function for tomorrow, what would it look like?
We started with strategy. I aligned our compliance efforts with the broader goals of the business, protecting margins, enabling acquisition readiness, driving operational efficiency, and maintaining regulatory excellence. This wasn’t compliance for the sake of avoiding penalties; this was compliance as a strategic lever, one that could drive value and resilience at every level of the supply chain.
Next, we built a global operating model that balanced standardisation with flexibility. Shared policies, core processes, and decision making frameworks were introduced to create alignment, but each region retained the autonomy to address its own regulatory landscape. In the US, we implemented a targeted import strategy to protect margins from shifting tariffs. In Northern Ireland, we secured key HMRC authorisations under the Windsor Framework to maintain continuity and optimise duty outcomes. Meanwhile, in Australia and China, we restructured documentation flows to reduce redundancy and accelerate customs clearance.
At the financial level, we overhauled oversight of customs valuation, Incoterms, and indirect tax flows. This allowed us to identify inefficiencies that had quietly accumulated over time. We streamlined duty payments, recovered overpaid VAT, and brought greater accuracy to landed cost calculations, all of which directly supported better cross border payment terms and financial planning.
Governance was another cornerstone. We didn’t just prepare for audits. We engineered systems that made us audit ready at all times. When HMRC conducted full reviews, we passed without a single finding. That level of compliance doesn’t come from last minute fixes; it comes from architecture.
But the transformation didn’t stop with systems and processes. We invested in people. I introduced and mentored compliance officers across regions, introduced new training standards, and embedded key performance indicators into leadership routines. We created a culture of shared ownership, where compliance wasn’t just one team’s job, but everyone’s responsibility.
The impact was swift and significant. Within a year, we had implemented a fully integrated global compliance strategy that touched every corner of our operations. We protected millions in margin through smarter VAT and duty management. We passed external audits, secured new regulatory authorisations, and laid the foundation for seamless post-acquisition integration.
More importantly, we changed the way the business perceived compliance. No longer seen as a cost center or a bottleneck, compliance became a source of clarity, capability, and confidence. It became a competitive advantage.
Why did it matter? Because global trade compliance isn’t about ticking boxes. It’s about unlocking performance. It’s the connective tissue that links markets, shields against regulatory disruption, and when done right, becomes a driver of growth and resilience.
That’s what we built. And that’s the kind of transformation I can bring to any organisation facing the challenge of scaling compliance in a global world.
Ryan Hill 
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