Celebrating e-Cert's 10th Year
When e-Cert was launched in July 2000, it was a very new concept which was embraced by a few exporting organisations with a degree of uncertainty. "Will the service be reliable?" "Can I be sure my application has been received by the Chamber". "How long will it take before I get the certified document" (the answer to that one was usually 1 - 3 days depending on the postal service).
In that first year fewer than 4,000 applications were applied for online. On receipt of the application, the EU Certificate of Origin (the only document then available) was printed out by the Chamber, reviewed, signed, stamped and returned to the exporter by post.
How things have changed. e-Cert, now on version 5, has changed enormously in that 10 years with each new version bringing new functionality based on feedback from the people who use it. Additional documents have been added, Arab Certificates of Origin, EUR1 and A.TR documents, and the British Chambers of Commerce worked hard to get acceptance of digitised signatures and electronic stamps to enable real benefit to be achieved by the introduction of a same day eXpress service.
Now, in 2010, e-Cert process in excess of 130,000 applications each year, and is still evolving to meet the changing needs of both exporters and the Chambers of Commerce.
e-Cert continues to be developed with the support of the British Chambers of Commerce to ensure that regulations and working practices are in accordance with the rule book. As Development Partner to the BCC, i2i is proud to serve the needs of both exporters and Chambers of Commerce througout the UK.
This year, to celebrate 10 years of the e-Cert service, we will be introducing more new functionality and a number of enhanced features to make it even simpler to use. So keep an eye on e-Cert World to keep up with our celebrations over the next few months.