CPO Rising’s Technology Round-Up returns today with another assortment of supply management technology news and updates from the past month to share with our community. If you are a sourcing, procurement, or spend management solution provider and you have news to share with us, please drop us a note at editor at cporising dot com. Thanks, and enjoy!
SAP Launches Blockchain Co-Innovation Project for IoT and Supply Chain
In late September, SAP (NYSE: SAP), the Germany-based enterprise software solutions provider, announced a collaborative effort with customer organizations to integrate Blockchain digital ledgers with connected devices (aka, “the Internet of Things”) in a bid to further digitize and link global supply chains. The collaborative effort will extend across multiple industries, namely aerospace and defense, automotive, and discrete manufacturing, as well as medical technology and pull in such partners as Capgemini, Deloitte, NetApp, and others. The SAP Cloud Platform Blockchain service will serve as the foundation for this co-innovation initiative, which will allow “first-mover” partners to integrate their IoT-enabled supply chain applications onto SAP’s blockchain in an effort to prove initial use cases – for example, for product lifecycle management, track and trace, and inventory management.
Oracle Launches Blockchain for Supply Chain, Attracts Early Partners
Earlier this week, Oracle (NYSE:ORCL), the California-based provider of business applications, databases, and infrastructure, announced the release of Oracle Blockchain Cloud Service, an enterprise-grade blockchain distributed digital ledger for the cloud. Oracle’s announcement comes on the heals of its decision to join Hyperledger, the worldwide open-source blockchain consortium hosted by The Linux Foundation. Oracle Blockchain Cloud Service comes with integration kits that allow B2B customers to integrate with Oracle on-premises and/or cloud-based systems, like ERP and SCM. Three other major names in B2B technology — Accenture, Infosys, and Intel Corporation — have also signed on to be innovation partners and will work with Oracle to build out its Blockchain proofs of concept for supply chain management and contract management.
Seven Stars Cloud Group Prepares to Launch AI-enabled Blockchain Platform
Late last week, Seven Stars Cloud Group, a self-described intelligent industrial internet (3I) solution provider, announced plans to deploy a Blockchain platform enabled with artificial intelligence (AI) in the fourth quarter of 2017. Dubbed the Asset-Backed Securitization, Tokenization, and Exchange Platform (ABST), Seven Stars Cloud Group’s solution will employ a blockchain ledger and AI enablers to connect B2B trading partners, increase transparency between them, and quickly process high volumes of structured and unstructured data to provide a faster, more direct B2B trading and finance platform.
Resilinc Launches Next-Gen Big Data Analytics Platform
Last month, California-based Resilinc, which develops cloud-based global supply chain risk intelligence and management solutions, announced that it has launched a “next-generation” Big Data analytics platform, WAVZ. According to company officials, WAVZ leverages a combination of machine learning and natural language processing (NLP) to quickly and efficiently process large volumes of structured and unstructured data to provide users with data-driven, prescriptive analysis to optimize risk management.
Key features of the new platform include a configurable, touch screen-enabled user interface (UI), supply chain visualization, and a variety of mobile applications, namely EventWatch. Other features include configurable risk profiles for things like parts, sites, suppliers, and products, “prescriptive risk playbooks,” which are essentially contingency plans for all sorts of risk events, and modularity/scalability for organizations of different maturity levels. WAVZ also features supplier portals, which allows them save, share, and tailor information with other customers, the ability for buyers and suppliers to connect through those portals, and the ability for suppliers to access and manage their risk scores.
ContractRoom and Pramata Partner on Contract Management
Recently, ContractRoom, a California-based provider of digital transaction management (DTM) and negotiation tools for the cloud, has partnered with Pramata, another California-based provider of commercial relationship operations (CRO) services, to produce an integrated, end-to-end contract management and CRO solution. It will automate the creation (authoring, drafting, editing, negotiation, and workflow) of contract documents, maintain contracts them post execution, and extract actionable intelligence from them, as well as from customer relationshp management, contract price quote, and AP systems. It will leverage AI enablers, as well as human-assisted AI to derive actionable business insights from current contractual documents and trading partner relationships.
Icertis Launches Icertis Experiences for Microsoft Teams
Finally, Icertis, the Seattle, Washington-based provider of contract management solutions in the cloud, announced last week that it has launched Icertis Experiences for Microsoft Teams. The integration effectively enables contracts and related data that is created, managed and stored within the Icertis Contract Management (ICM) to be accessed (or “surfaced”) within Microsoft Teams collaboration applications. Providing business users with contract data and information “in context” eliminates the need for users to toggle between multiple applications, simplifies the UI, and improves the user experience (UX). In theory, this ought to improve solution adoption, collaboration, productivity, and value.
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