In this customer testimonial video, Thomas Mackie, Director of Global Trade at Sophos explains how manual transaction reviews were slowing the business and creating risk. By implementing e2open Global Trade Management, Sophos automated export compliance screening, reduced review times to under a minute, and gave a small, agile team the confidence and capacity to focus on higher‑value work. This story shows how e2open supports global trade compliance at scale.
“With e2open’s Global Trade Management, we’ve transformed a chaotic, manual review process into an automated workflow that approves cases in under a minute, filters out low‑risk transactions, and gives us confidence that every shipment and download complies with global export and sanctions laws. The time saved now lets our team focus on auditing, partnering with supply chain, and ensuring our products are correctly classified worldwide—while still processing around 1,000 orders a week within eight hours.”Thomas Mackie Director of Global Trade, Sophos
What is Sophos?
Sophos is a mid‑size cybersecurity company with approximately 4,000–5,000 employees, delivering both hardware‑based and virtual security products to customers in 155 countries. Operating from five global warehouses, Sophos manages a high volume of cross‑border transactions that must comply with complex export controls and financial sanctions laws across multiple jurisdictions.
The global trade compliance challenge: managing export controls across 155 countries
Selling cybersecurity hardware and software globally requires strict adherence to export controls and financial sanctions regulations. At Sophos, every cross‑border transaction—whether a physical shipment or a web‑based product download—must be reviewed to ensure compliance with laws in each jurisdiction where the company operates.
Before implementing e2open Global Trade Management, the process was entirely manual. Every transaction required review, follow‑up, and direct outreach to requesters for additional information. With high order volumes and global reach, this approach created inefficiencies and made it difficult to scale. The team was spending significant time checking orders, accounts, and downloads, creating what the speaker describes as “chaos.”
Without automation, the risk was not just slower processing—it was the constant need to double‑check work to ensure compliance confidence.
Automating export compliance with e2open Global Trade Management
Sophos turned to e2open to bring structure, speed, and confidence to its compliance processes.
With global trade management software in place, Sophos can now automatically scrutinize every shipment and every web download requested by customers or prospects. The system filters transactions, allowing the team to focus only on the cases that truly require human review. When a case is approved, automated emails notify requesters, eliminating manual follow‑ups.
What once took extensive manual effort now takes approximately 45 to 60 seconds per case. The filtering capabilities give the team confidence that transactions passing through the system are safe and compliant—dramatically reducing the need for constant oversight.
By implementing technology into the process, Sophos transformed global trade compliance from a bottleneck into a streamlined, reliable operation supported by e2open.
Business results: faster approvals, reduced risk, and a more agile compliance team
The impact of automating global trade compliance has been significant for Sophos:
- Cross‑border transactions are reviewed and approved in as little as 45–60 seconds
- Approximately 1,000 orders per week are processed and shipped within eight hours
- Automated filtering allows teams to focus only on high‑risk cases
- Increased confidence that compliant transactions can pass through safely
- Reduced manual workload and fewer compliance bottlenecks
With e2open handling routine screening, the team has gained time to focus on higher‑value activities. They can now audit processes, build new skills, work more closely with supply chain and product teams, and better understand how hardware and software products should be classified globally.
As Mackie notes, the confidence provided by the system is paramount—without it, the team would still be constantly checking and rechecking transactions.
Building a scalable, future‑ready global trade compliance operation
For Sophos, implementing technology into global trade compliance is not optional—it is essential. As the speaker explains, organizations that do not modernize these processes are likely already years behind.
With e2open Global Trade Management, Sophos has built a compliance operation that is fast, scalable, and resilient. The result is a small, agile team that can support global growth, maintain regulatory confidence, and collaborate more effectively across the business—without sacrificing speed or control.
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