Doing international business is rarely simple. For a seller to find a buyer, for a sales contract to be signed, for the goods to be shipped by the producer and received by the consumer, for the payment to be made within the contractual deadline, each phase of the transaction must take place within a pre-established system, based on specific rules for trade.The UN/ECE has learned that the best results are gained through basing trade facilitation on a combination of business-process facilitation and the opportunities offered by the information technologies. By harmonizing and standardizing procedures and information flows, this combination of techniques simplifies and integrates the trading process. The results:  reduced trade-cycle time, simpler ‘paperwork’, incentives to harmonize national standards to international ones, substantive cost savings.