The webinar started exactly at 1:15 PM. Mr. Crisologo started the orientation by thanking the institution for accepting the partnership of eKonek with the HCDC. Then, he asked about the year level of the students as he found that there were many BSCA attendees during the Microsoft Teams. With that, the BSCA Chairperson, CB Lozano responded that most of the attendees were the upcoming 4^th-year BSCA students who were taking the On-The-Job Training. Then, he welcomed Mr. Crisologo for his presence. Mr. Crisologo requested CB Lozano to formally introduce the BSCA Faculty to him to know and acknowledge them. After that, the Orientation for Experient started as Mr. Crisologo taked over on behalf of the main speaker, Ms. Acobera. The orientation was divided into two (2) parts, the discussion of the idea and the background of the Experient & next topic, the Part two will be the actual demonstration of how to use the said Portal.

PART I: History & Background of the e-Konek

Taking a brief history of E-Konek as explained by Mr. Crisologo as he elaborated that each company has its history of establishing its success amidst trials and challenges. The e-Konek were engaged in e-government systems as to promote the country’s economic and Freeport zones. Mr. Crisologo mentioned that the eKonek was an IT Company Solution client base from the supply chain and brokers. Being aware of different VASPs in BOC, the eKonek considered one as this was accredited in establishing the trade facilitation. Being incorporated on 27 November 2002 up to the present, the e-Konek further expands services to create system solutions for trade and logistics while maintaining the largest VASPs in the Philippines. Due to the extensive knowledge and experience of the people, the possibility of establishing the success of e-Konek was partly attributed in terms of system development & implementation. As for the status of the e-Konek, Mr. Crisologo shared with us that they had handled more than 80 applications running in a private cloud, processed more than a hundred million transactions, and had an additional 39,000 and still counting in terms to access to the private cloud environment.

Mr. Crisologo shared with us the breakthrough of the e-Konek as they established and uplifted these core values in their organization. Focus, focus, focus—as they value their clients and aim to focus on and cater to their needs. By reaching out to them, they were indeed being handled by the support staff. They have also guided the idea that they grow by facing problems & difficulties—seeing issues and challenges to improve the services for the benefit of clients. Understanding the client’s distinct needs and requirements was considered. Maximize client benefits—valued for their money as they provide a fair share of the services given to clients. Taking the high ground—willing to reform to improve business processes for clients and national concerns. Guarantee security & confidentiality—by providing necessary safeguards & equipping solutions against fraud and security breaches to serve with integrity. Shape the landscape—creation of groundbreaking changes in workflow and process in solutions and systems. Numerous partnerships were established as the e-Konek was accredited and considered one of the trusted VASPs. This comprises different private industries, government agencies, and higher educational institutions. The Holy Cross of Davao College was officially partnered with e-Konek recently in June of 2022. Most of the partnered companies of e-Konek were the private enterprises centered in the customs industry, such as freight forwarding companies, shipping lines, logistics, brokerages, private warehouses, and other customs industries.

In the current context, trade and cross-border transactions have become more digitalized. Thus, the government & regulatory agencies were implementing systems that automate the processes. The other speaker, Mr. Gelido shared his experience during his college days as he was a product of HCDC. He may not have been exposed to practicing digitalized processes and transactions in the customs industry. That was why the new generation of BS Customs Administration students was more exposed to this area, as the global condition of customs transactions was centered on technology and IT solutions. With this, the education curriculums keep up with customs and trade by providing digital solutions that could elevate their learning and knowledge in terms of knowing the aspects of the nitty-gritty in customs and trade. Nowadays, students face the dilemma of accepting the new normal of learning modality.

As the BSCA Interns were not employed in the customs industry for on-the-field training, the Experient were considered part of the learning engagement. This was a Sandbox Portal that allowed the students to gain hands-on experience. This was also related to the real technology used in the actual practice. This Portal was only a test environment for the students and contained insightful information related to customs and trade activities. The Experient Sandbox contains different links redirecting each eKonek used in BOC, PEZA, SBMA, and other agencies in the customs industry. The BOC includes the online forms of the CPRS, eMS, SAD in Consumption, Warehousing, Transit/Transshipment, and OLRS. Here, the students were able to practice sample data of transactions. When students could do some activities here, the grades were tallied, and the number of errors was displayed once transactions were submitted. The good thing about this application this also contains information on the latest news and advisories relevant to Customs and cross-border trade that helps the students be informed of current events. The Experient Sandbox portal includes the training portion, the Portal that contains different video tutorials. On the publication page, it showcases the relevant Memorandums and Ordinances released from the Bureau of Customs. One thing that this Portal was student-friendly was that it provided a platform wherein the students could view the posted notes of the teachers that were viewable for them. This Portal includes the e-learning engagement of setting practical and mock exams by the teachers to the students. The teachers can create and administer exams and could generate scores as soon as students finish the tests. Taking the fact that the online exams were taken once by the students, the grades were computed and recorded in the student’s profile to generate reports & performance. The report page in the Sandbox portal, which contains different reports of exam scores, was generated so the teachers could view and be guided in terms of the students’ performance. This also included the attendance sheets that monitor students' log-in and log-out activities. Another thing that was available in the Portal was the careers portion, wherein it showcases the availability of job postings from other companies. Thus, the Experience Sandbox application benefitted the students as it aimed for them to learn effectively and better understand. It assisted students as they were equipped to be guided with customs publications and reference materials used in preparation for board exams. The system's mobility and responsive web design make it viewable on any technological device and may be accessed anytime, anywhere.

Mr. Gelido leaves with Benjamin Franklin's motto: “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.” Thus, we had to invest in something worthwhile that could contribute to our self-growth and development, especially with the profession and degree we are facing. Investment in knowledge wherein is something that no one can take away from us.

PART II: Actual Demonstration of the Experient & Sandbox Portal Account

For Part two of the Experient Orientation, this segment provided us the actual demonstration of using the Experient & the Sandbox Portal. Ms. Acobera was the next speaker to give us the orientation on using the Experient Sandbox application. She first introduces what an admin user of this Portal can do. Next, she explained to the account teachers what were the things that they could do by using this Portal. For the students, we are trained on how to access the Portal with our account and how to create and make activities out of this Portal.

for the School Admin

For the school admin panel of the Experient Sandbox Portal, Ms. Acobera demonstrated by logging in to provide an overview of the entire account of the faculty and the students. The school admin can change the password and retrieve the account of the students and teachers there. With this account, the school admin account will handle the account of the students and teachers, as this will be turned over to the ICT Office of the institution for portal management.

for the Teacher admin

For the teacher dashboard in Experient Portal, logging in to the account must be considered, and they have the right to change their own password to remove the default password given by the system. If a teacher has any difficulty in accessing the account, the school admin will have the overall access to retrieve the account. The teacher can see the notifications and can post notes for students. This also includes adding schedules of teachers’ availability in responding to some questions or concerns. The teacher account in Experient can show the timeline of the different online platforms used and view tutorials, news and advisories, publications, and updated memorandums. They can create online exams as much as they want with some modifications in terms of providing some schedule or hour limit in taking these online exams or mock board exams. In the teachers’ dashboard, the Portal could generate reports in different faculty to combine all the details by clicking the reports portion in the dashboard. With this, the teachers may not find it hard to verify and assess the overall performance of the students.

Student portal dashboard

Ms. Acobera explained that the students might be able to have two (2) access and account in terms of having an Experient Portal Access and the Sandbox Portal Access (that were redirected to the VASP). Considering if there were some logging issues, the Experient Portal Account may be fixed by the school admin, while the e-Konek technical support staff can only fix the Sandbox Portal Access. The Speaker informed us that we must not be afraid to practice this page as the lodged data here were not centered directly through the BOC, but the data of the activities made will be recorded by the system. We are also encouraged to lodge as much as we want. Once the filed is finished, it will be graded and contains the assessment of the students in terms of the correct and incorrect answers. Then, the students were able to access the Sandbox Account directed to VASP by clicking the application of the CPRS, which was the application form for Accreditation of Customs Individuals/Companies, the EMS Electronic Manifest System, as this system used in airlines for the manifests, the Single Administrative Document SAD used in consumption, warehouse, transit or in transshipments when lodging a shipment intended for customs clearance. Then, the Online release system ORS is used to monitor the release of goods in customs territory to validate the legitimate transaction made. For the CPRS, this online form contains the needed information of a client/stakeholder in the application for customs accreditation. The demonstration continued as we are bound to discover another area in terms of providing and getting the manifest of the shipment first.

The House Bill of Lading in registered and accredited freight forwarder companies will be provided upon as this will be having an arrival notification. Verifying a vessel or aircraft’s arrival and registry number is the one way that the customs brokers validate the commodities being subjected to release. Upon validation of legitimate transaction, the declarant/broker creates a Single Administrative Document to import shipment transaction whether this falls under consumption, warehousing, transshipment, or transit. Considering also that the information encoded in the manifest must reflect the same in a waybill and the SAD. Ms. Acobera gave some tips as we can use the F3 in our computer to find information if we were not familiar with codes of the countries, numbers, and tariff classifications. There was also some information provided in the SAD that was not mandatory; thus, we only considered those items that were mandatory to lodge. With this, we must be familiar with the buyer and seller and the overall information needed to declare articles. In attesting the validity of the information, a declarant must consider vital details of a certain shipment origin. One example was to distinguish the nationality of the carrier matters in what flag representation is used. The SAD contains the system for assessing the valuation note on knowing how much the consignee would pay the customs duty and tax. The item valuation note form was used when a certain shipment contained distinct articles, and this must be solved in accordance by pro-ration if all of the shipment declarations are distinct from each other or similar from each other. With this, we are able to know on how much would be the customs duty to be collected. These boxes indicate in the Single Administrative Document contain the needed information for the shipment to be released in the customs directory.

After Ms. Acobera had covered all the demonstrations, he asked some questions from the students. As the students could not ask any, the Speaker requested everyone to follow and like their social media accounts. With that, they were able to disseminate information that was relevant to the mass media. They also requested to have a photo opt for documentation purposes. Afterward, the webinar session for Experient Orientation ended at exactly 4:15 PM.