Obstacles & Opportunities in Supply Chain B2B Blockchain adoption. The New Dawn in Global Supply Chains.

While high levels of investment into enterprise blockchain projects have been sustained over the last three years, the stark reality is that the vast majority still never make it beyond proof-of-concept. In fact, as few as 5% make it to production,,. According to global research and advisory firm Gartner, 90% of those will need replacement within two years to remain competitive. This means there’s monumental potential for wasted resources.

There are still misconceptions in the enterprise space as to what the technology can achieve. As a result, many enterprises still attempt to use blockchain for use cases that are better suited to traditional databases. Therefore, it’s worth reviewing what blockchain is good for.

1. Can multiple parties benefit from sharing data and coordinating processes along their value stream?

2. Do those parties currently face a barrier to coordination such as the inability to trust each other?

3. Are the services of an intermediary difficult to acquire, is the data involved too sensitive to entrust an intermediary, or is an intermediary more expensive than the proposed blockchain solution?

4. Are the parties holding high-quality, accurate data, and can standards about the structure of this data be agreed upon by the parties?

5.Is the blockchain solution sufficiently decentralised. Is that the goal for that blockchain company going forward?

The need for a trustless setup comes from the fact that all parties — shippers, manufacturers, suppliers — have different economic and political interests at stake. Therefore, utilizing blockchain technology makes perfect sense. However, the execution by Consortia B2B Blockchain is not something that can be categorized as trustless or equal. The solution is doomed to fail due to the technical and logistical shortcomings of such cooperation.

Blockchain consortia obliges its clients to use the software and the tools developed by them, thereby increasing the costs of adoption and making the entry barrier even higher. In the end, one would spend more on the implementation of the platform than one would save by adopting blockchain technology.

ENABLING DIGITAL, INTEGRATED AND AUTOMATED GLOBAL SUPPLY CHAINS

The Supply Chain Saas Middleware Platform Seamlessly Integrating Legacy And Emerging Technologies. We Provide Supply Chain Managers With A Digital Footprint, Providing Shipment History And Item Visibility For Optimizing Safe And Secure Supply Chains Saving Time And Money.

For every shipment, the platform generates a Digital Footprint. This transparent audit trail provides supply chain managers with exceptionally detailed, real-time visibility into their global supply chain operations. Multiple stakeholders such as Brokers, 3rd Party Logistic, Freight Forwarders, etc., can add compliance and shipping documentation at key handling points across the entire supply chain. IoT triggers enrich the Digital Footprint with real-time telematics (E.g., geolocation, temperature, humidity, shock, light, etc). The digital identity assigned to products (e.g. via barcode or QR scans) allows companies and consumers to ascertain the origin of a product. In return, use cases like certificates for organic food or fair trade standards or loyalty schemes for purchases can be implemented.

These services can give sellers an edge over competition without having to pay middlemen to handle the data streams or handing out Supply Chain data to an external entity. All the data collected is stored on an immutable blockchain providing a highly trusted record of events. Each Digital Footprint includes a map to help quickly identify any issues with a particulate shipment which requires attention. Digital Footprints can remain private to your organization or shared with select third party suppliers and partners, allowing compliance with data privacy and company specific requirements.

Morpheus.Network as a “middleware” can integrate into companies existing technology infrastructure and can connect dispersed systems to provide benefits via optimization and automation. We don’t look to digitize and untangle the entire supply chains using our one platform. Rather, our value proposition is that we can identify specific challenges and areas where our platform’s advanced technologies (E.g., blockchain, AI, IoT, OCR, Machine Learning, document generation, fraud detection and prevention, digitalization, frictionless payments, etc.) can help solve those specific challenges in a highly efficient, direct and cost-effective way.

The Platform provides actionable IoT events that trigger business rules such as temperature compliance, safety, location based events. Morpheus.Network middleware platform powered by Blockchain integrates with over 100 industry leading technologies and supply chain service providers (including SAP, RPA, Oracle, US Customs, SAT, eB/L ,Microsoft Dynamics, HS Codes, IoT, GS1, Blockchain, SENASA, GeoTab, Cloud, TSM, WMS, CRM, SWIFT (1600 Banks), KYC, AML, RFID, QR Code, AI, ML, etc, over 100 Global Carriers (inc.DHL, UPS, FedEx etc).

The Platform is Blockchain, Cloud and IoT agnostic. So the clients can work with their preferred vendors. It automates and digitise Compliance (all legacy and custom documentation), Logistics, Tracking & Tracing, Fraud detection and prevention,Insurance, Invoicing, Procurement, Payments and Document storage. Data on the Platform is portable and interoperable. The digital events and data can be securely exchanged between all stakeholders and Governments using different systems or compliance platforms.

As simple to use as Amazon tracking number, Morpheus.Network provides supply chain managers with a trusted Digital Footprint to track and trace each step of the process.

Morpheus.Network platform directly connects to SAP and other ERP systems for the supply chain data which means less manual interfaces and errors in the SOP process. Integration for Purchase Orders and Sales as well as Material Management for Inventory management.

On the Platform two parties involved in a common transaction may use different blockchains or ERP systems. Morpheus.Network uses DLT and blockchain agnostic technologies to integrate multiple fragmented processes of the chain workflow.

Companies can use the data in their existing databases and ERP systems, and ensure that it remains synchronised and consistent with other third-party databases, in a completely private way while using Blockchain as a common frame of reference.

Modular architecture is highly customisable for individual needs. Adoption costs are minimal and cause no disruption to ongoing business activities.

Shipping & customs documents are instantly generated with each countries regulation taken into account.

Focus on specific, promising use cases

The first step involves determining whether there is sufficient accessible value at stake for a given use case. Companies can only avoid the trap of developing a solution without a problem by rigorously investigating true pain points — the frictions for customers that blockchain could eliminate.

Identification of specific pain points enables granular analysis of the potential commercial value within the constraints of the overall feasibility of the blockchain solution.

Over time, the value of blockchain will shift from driving cost reduction to enabling entirely new business models and revenue streams.

In the years to come decentralisation will become a norm. Only agile and flexible blockchain solutions which are sufficiently decentralised will survive.

We are intensely focused on eliminating supply chain inefficiencies. Through our discovery process, we identify specific pain points within a company’s supply chain, and use our platform to solve them. As a middleware platform, we can integrate with your existing systems and processes which opens up new opportunities for automation and optimisation.

One of the reasons we are growing rapidly is the tremendous flexibility and versatility of our supply chain platform to adapt to different use cases.

We provide Agri Food producers, exporters and retailers with a Digital Footprint for end to end shipment history that guarantees regulatory compliance, full load visibility from farm to fork for optimizing supply chains saving time and money.

Here is the Demo of the Platform focused on Export/Compliance from Netherlands to UK targeting European Agri Food Vertical and Brexit.

Improve Food Safety
Reduce Food Compliance and Supply Chain OPEX
Protect Brand
Optimize Working Capital
Business Goals Compliance & Sustainability

Real time inventory, reliable ETAs and an ePOD improve accounts receivables. Reliable ETA improves plant planning and utilization.

With purchase order, SKU, BoL, descriptions, quantity, price, units of measure & QR codes,IoT, geo fencing etc. The Platform eliminates various pain points for customs agents & auditors, while making the compliance process seamless for businesses.

Automated compliance for Food and Nutrition.

Remove manual processes.

The Morpheus.Network Platform is uniquely positioned as a “middleware” solution — basically a binding glue between various IT systems and solutions. The platform can connect to multiple separated systems and trigger actions in an event-based workflow that resembles an automated digital clone of the existing manual processes.

With a simple drag-and-drop interface, automating the most complex global supply chains requires no technical expertise. The platform transforms the most advanced technologies into basic modules that can be deployed in minutes. Easy, safe, low-cost and reliable.

The platform renders manual, error-prone processes into an automated and streamlined digital workflow. It creates a digital twin of supply chain processes, allowing all systems and data to be connected and normalized. The result is enhanced control, higher efficiency and the ability to easily monitor process performance and implement preemptive measures before errors occur.

Morpheus.Network offers 100+ preset modules that represent the most used technologies in global trade today, different compliance platforms, as well as emerging technologies like Blockchain, AI, IoT or Machine Learning that the industry has embraced as the future.

With the dawn of globalization, supply chains have become incredibly complex. A typical supply chain involves a tangle of stakeholders in different parts of the world, each subject to different regulations, languages, currencies, and more. Not only are there co-dependencies across the entire chain, but there are also a multitude of intermediaries involved in the physical movement of goods.

Today, the backbone of supply chain networks involves many different IT systems and platforms which need to communicate with each other. This includes different enterprise resource planning (ERP) platforms, different compliance platforms, warehouse management systems (WMS), legacy databases, order processing tools, logistics tools, documentation management and payment layers, just to name a few. Information is mostly stored in inefficient data silos with inhibited data sharing and collaboration.

Efficient supply chain management is one of the key pillars to a profitable business and has evolved from a business support role to a value generator that became a business model of its own.

The COVID-19 pandemic has further highlighted the need for robust and resilient supply chains. Efficient supply chain management not only allows companies to mitigate unforeseen challenges, but more importantly can create competitive advantages and new revenue streams.

Morpheus.Network is a software solution catered to the needs of supply chain managers. It brings all data into the same platform, makes information exchangeable and allows managers to automate and digitize previously manual processes end-to- end, resulting in higher efficiency and cost-savings.

Synchronizing Systems of Records between Enterprises at Scale on Ethereum Mainnet.

The typical Blockchain/DLT use cases of enterprises fall into one of two categories: financial services and supply chain. Many enterprise projects have implemented solutions in those two areas. However, these have been almost exclusively on private blockchains and not Ethereum Mainnet. Despite some notable exceptions such as Morpheus.Network.

The two primary concerns of enterprises in adopting the Ethereum Mainnet have been both transaction scalability and privacy. Both of these can now be addressed with Layer 2 solutions such as zk-zk Rollups or zk-Optimistic Rollups

B2B transactions have traditionally been fraught with issues around data synchronicity between two systems of record because there is no guarantee that contract terms are properly represented in an ERP system — addresses, product numbers, or payment terms come to mind — or that the history of commercial transactions (Orders, Invoices, Credit Memos, etc.) are accurately reflected in both ERP systems — incorrect tax calculations or incorrect application of volume discounts to pricing are classics. These issues lead to hundreds of billions of dollars in opportunity costs every year across the nearly three trillion B2B transactions a year globally. Larger organizations with thousands or tens of thousands of business relationships globally not only have the headache of the opportunity costs but also the challenge of maintaining one-to-one integrations between many systems of record, often with arcane technology.

Through design patterns and protocols, L2, and other scalability solutions that support both complex EVM-type smart contract logic aligned with the business rules around commercial documents such as Orders and Invoices and privacy preservation through zk-proofs are:

• Enabling the synchronization of systems of record by enforcing data consistency through zk-proofs that can only be generated correctly if the submitted commercial documents comply with the relevant business rules and data encoded into its zk prover systems’ program circuits,
• Enabling full B2B transaction audits by anyone, anytime, in real-time based on onchain recursive zk-proofs,
• Making it virtually impossible for counterparties to cheat since all zk-proofs need to be validated before being finalized on-chain, while
• Maintaining complete confidentiality through the very nature of the zk-proofs

Global Supply Chain Traceability

Lastly, global supply chains have always been a focus of blockchain projects, and some programs have gone into production such as Food Trust, Marco Polo, Trade Lens, or the Morpheus Network. Yet these have primarily been on private networks, despite some notable exceptions such as Morpheus.Network

What does this mean for Enterprises?

Now, for the first time, enterprises have the opportunity to combine the best of both worlds — applications that meet enterprise security, privacy, and compliance requirements while also enjoying the enhanced economic security assurances and digital asset network effects of Ethereum Mainnet. Even though the technology is still rapidly evolving, and the underlying cryptography is still “young” by enterprise standards, enterprises are advised to get “into the action” now. Why? To take advantage of new DeFi opportunities to drive net-new revenue such as building enterprise appropriate and regulatory compliant products from those new asset classes, or mixing and matching new and existing asset classes into new financial products at scale, or leveraging the scalability of the new L2 solutions with the innovations of decentralized exchanges’ automated market makers to create concentrated liquidity pools along price or premium curves. And, finally, to collaborate with emerging L2 vendors to build the next iteration of L2 solutions to “enterprise spec.”

More info about scaling on Ethereum mainet here: https://conrad-cubic.medium.com/synchronizing-systems-of-records-between-enterprises-at-scale-on-ethereum-mainnet-a9eefffad6d3

Learn about Key Benefits on Sustainable Supply Chains Enabling Tools. Blockchain, IoT, AI & smart contracts.

From very fast POC deployment (5 days) to Project execution in just 45 days.

Author: Conrad Cubic

Source: Coindesk, Gartner, McKinsey, EEA.