The has mandated manufacturers to improve traceability, which is essential for ensuring that medicines reach patients safely. 麻豆原创 Information Collaboration Hub for Life Sciences is designed to help meet these demands by streamlining the tracking process. However, as the network of users has grown, support challenges have surfaced. To address these issues, 麻豆原创 introduced Built-In Support into the hub to help provide direct, seamless assistance to life sciences companies and their partners.

I had the opportunity to interview Tarun Luthra, head of Support 鈥� Industries & CX, and Andreas Krummlauf, vice president and head of Product Management Life Sciences, Health and Ecosystem, about the project鈥檚 impact. Here’s how Built-In Support is helping to enhance operational efficiency for network users in the life sciences industry.

Q: How did this project come about?

Krummlauf: , manufacturers of medicine needed to develop the ability to uniquely identify every pack of medicine they sell in those countries. This is to avoid counterfeiting in the legitimate supply chain. To support this requirement, 麻豆原创’s serialization portfolio was initiated in 2015 with the 麻豆原创 Advanced Track and Trace for Pharmaceuticals application, a corporate serialization repository.

麻豆原创 Information Collaboration Hub for Life Sciences started in 2016 with a focused goal: to manage traceability and serialization data exchange for our customers and a couple of hundred of their business partners. In 2021, the hub won the Hasso Plattner Founders鈥� Award.

As the network expanded to tens of thousands of partners, a key limitation emerged: we did not have a simple way for business partners, acting as network end users, to directly interact with 麻豆原创 support in case of critical issues, even without having a support contract with 麻豆原创 in place.

Q: What support challenges were network end users facing?

Luthra: The challenge arose from supporting an increasing number of network end users that were not direct 麻豆原创 customers. Without access to 麻豆原创鈥檚 support system, the network end users had to rely on their customers to resolve issues, adding unnecessary steps and risked communication gaps. This presented an opportunity to implement Built-In Support to support our customers鈥� business partners as network end users when they use 麻豆原创 Information Collaboration Hub for Life Sciences.

Q: How does Built-In Support make a difference for network end users?

Luthra: We are now providing network end users with a direct entry point from within 麻豆原创 Information Collaboration Hub for Life Sciences, enabling them to easily contact the support team. Built-In Support is seamlessly integrated into the hub. The network end user can find help by searching 麻豆原创 Knowledge Base Articles or submitting a case.

Krummlauf: This streamlined process can enhance the support experience and helps ensure users can quickly find the help they need. Network end users can now resolve issues independently or submit a case without involving customers in the resolution process. This improvement leads to faster response times. Users can efficiently search for relevant product information and potentially resolve issues on their own. This autonomy helps enhance the overall support experience and empowers users to find solutions quickly and effectively.

Built-In Support Enhances User Experience and Support Efficiency

In conclusion, marks a significant advancement in enhancing user experience and support efficiency. When network end users are empowered to directly access support resources and resolve issues independently, we not only help to streamline the support process but also reinforce 麻豆原创’s commitment to improving lives through better life sciences solutions. As regulatory demands evolve, our innovative approaches will continue to drive progress and collaboration in the life sciences sector. For more insights, stay connected with 麻豆原创’s ongoing developments.

When we started to talk, Andreas Heckmann, executive vice president and head of Customer Solution Support & Innovation at 麻豆原创, stated, 鈥淎lthough it was one of the most challenging years in my professional history, it was still a year filled with opportunities. We are seeing traction in the transformation of customer support I described 11 months ago, and we delivered a great amount of product innovations to our customers.鈥�

In this interview, Heckmann gives insight into how the transformation is continuing.

Q: How has 2022 been going for you in the transformation?

A: I鈥檓 proud of the notable, award-winning product releases that are directly relevant to supporting economic needs and helping with sustainability. Take, for example, the solution. We鈥檙e enabling agribusinesses to tap into their vast source of farming data by leveraging data science and machine learning. This farming intelligence helps them leverage processes and services to better forecast and increase farming yields and quality. It will also help them use the right balance of water resources and help keep fertilizer and crop protection to a minimum. This will help agribusinesses play their part in becoming more sustainable and efficient.

Let me also point out the Hasso Plattner Founders鈥� Award-winning . It鈥檚 helping prevent pharmaceutical drug counterfeiting by enabling traceability and verification of products. With an estimated 50% or more of drugs in Africa being counterfeit, this product is definitely helping businesses to protect their intellectual property and, more importantly, people鈥檚 health and lives.

Another exciting sustainability-focused app release this year is the . In this project, we developed a solution extension to help neutralize carbon emissions. Our customers can access data collected from business travel and consider ways to watch their carbon footprint.

All of these solutions make me proud of our Customer Solution Support & Innovation organization and underscores the many ways we have our customers鈥� goals and priorities front of mind.

With 麻豆原创 Cloud ALM being available for a while now, how do you see it being taken up?

is the strategic platform to help customers manage their entire application lifecycle, both on premise and in the cloud. We will close out this year seeing quite an amazing uptake and increasingly more customers using the solution to help implement and operate their cloud and hybrid environments. There鈥檚 a big uptake on 麻豆原创 Cloud ALM, with functions being used more intensely for managing project teams and business processes. And it鈥檚 also getting third-party products integrated to give customers even more access to content such as guidance, tools, and checklists for their implementation projects and operations.

What progress are you making around Real-Time Support during this transformation?

We鈥檙e seeing momentum in continuously transforming the support experience for customers towards a more personalized and preventative experience. This could be when they search for a support answer in or , or when they report an issue. At the beginning of this year, we received a for the innovative way we鈥檙e capturing our customer problems in a structured and guided fashion. It鈥檚 what we call support assistant. This assistant guides customers through the process of logging an incident. Machine learning functionality suggests answers from our knowledge repositories along the way. Often the answer is found in the first bunch of suggestions and no incident needs to be created.

If no answer can be provided instantaneously, the incident information collected is packaged for a support engineer to process further during a or a scheduled appointment. We found that real-time interactions get completed on average within 30 minutes and two of every three issues are solved in the first chat. And these interactions support nine different languages, allowing for multi-language dialogues in real time. For either way the customer decides to go, the support assistant and help customers get their issues resolved much more quickly and efficiently.

Now imagine, we鈥檙e already working on the next generation of the entire support experience for customers to look forward to. With Built-In Support, we鈥檙e making significant progress as the tool for continuous two-way dialogue with customers. It鈥檚 our goal to proactively notify customers about critical issues or relevant new features and to take care of any potential problem before a customer becomes aware of it. We鈥檙e also eagerly awaiting the go-live of our new customer facing portal, 麻豆原创 for Me, with its completely redesigned user experience.

麻豆原创 is getting into customer-centric observability. What does this mean?

Customers trust us with their critical business processes. Service availability is the foundation of that trust and naturally a prime topic for us. We see it as a prerequisite for customer success. A focus of our transformation is to become more predictive and proactive. It鈥檚 what we鈥檙e calling customer-centric observability. This is a methodology that focuses on observing real user experience and outcomes to get advanced warnings ahead of customer-reported incidents and to quickly react upon them. By monitoring 1.5 billion system actions daily, we鈥檙e proactively watching for potential issues and preventing them from happening.

What can we expect for 2023?

Personally, I’m excited to see the launch of the bi-directional dialogue in Built-In Support and 麻豆原创 for Me. This means customers can look forward to getting an even better support experience in 2023. In addition, they should expect to get significantly improved results and optimized recommendations when searching for solutions or creating incident tickets for support. Plus, there will be more times when potential problems are resolved without customers even knowing any problems existed. While we will certainly not be done next year, given all we鈥檝e planned for our customers, I鈥檓 confident that we鈥檒l already begin reaping the harvest.

Follow Andreas Heckmann on and .
Regina Postman is part of Customer Solution Support & Innovation Communications at 麻豆原创.

Increasing regulations are also sparking digital innovation across life sciences. For example, organizations are required to share updated supply chain data with trusted partners for compliance with the final phased-in regulations of the . Initially passed in 2013, the latest batch of requirements from this act will require pharmacies, wholesalers, and manufacturers to track and report drug shipments for legitimacy between authorized trading partners. That鈥檚 where Spherity Credentialing Service CARO comes in, an app that provides updated information proving a dispenser鈥檚 trading partner status.

鈥淲hen a pharmacist in a tiny dispensary in North Dakota has suspicions about a received drug shipment, they send a verification request to a global pharmaceutical manufacturer that has numerous wholesalers in between them and the pharmacy,鈥� said Dr. Oliver Nuernberg, chief product owner of Life Sciences at 麻豆原创. 鈥淎utomating the credentialing process builds transparency and trust between indirect partners, immediately surfacing the pharmacy鈥檚 credentials as an authorized trading partner. This saves time and costs with greater information accuracy and fewer delays, strengthening an organization鈥檚 ability to meet DSCSA regulations.鈥�

Available on , Spherity Credentialing Service CARO is integrated with聽, a cloud-based network solution that helps organizations comply with other provisions of the U.S.聽DSCSA. For example, drug traceability is another U.S. DSCSA mandate. Pharmaceutical manufacturers can also use the information hub to help law enforcement trace drug shipments by serial numbers, supporting audits that help keep counterfeit medications out of the supply chain.

Intelligent Automation Strengthens Health of Drug Supply Chain

Spherity functions as a digitally encrypted wallet that captures and stores a dispenser鈥檚, or any other trading partner鈥檚, verified identity data, including address, notarized documents such as articles of incorporation, as well as updated U.S. state and DEA license information. By digitizing previously manual data collection and distribution tasks between systems, the app eliminates historical time lags that often resulted in outdated information.

鈥淚n the past, information about trading partner status was manually imported on a monthly basis from spreadsheets provided by third parties. An order might come from a wholesaler or dispenser whose license expired or was revoked weeks or even months ago,鈥� said Nuernberg. 鈥淓lectronic credentialing surfaces accurate information much faster, helping organizations automatically prove compliance with regulations, including license type as required to dispense various drugs.鈥�

Once a pharmacy鈥檚 identity is verified in their digital wallet, pharmaceutical companies would also be informed on an ongoing basis if the state or federal agency didn鈥檛 renew that license or revoked it for any reason.

Verified Partner Identity for Supply Chain Safety

Verifying a dispenser鈥檚 identity isn鈥檛 as easy as it sounds. Drug supply chains are complex, involving manufacturers, wholesale distributors, re-packagers, and logistics companies long before the goods reach pharmacies for dispensing. Having an app that automatically verifies a dispenser鈥檚 identity in real or near real time is designed to support regulatory compliance and help make drug supply chains more secure. Anticipating the 2023 regulations, some global pharmaceutical manufacturers and wholesalers have been testing the app with measurable results.

鈥淯sing the app, organizations have told us that they can securely and more easily verify trading partners and generate audit-ready records,鈥� said Georg J眉rgens, manager of Industry Solutions at Spherity. 鈥淲ith electronic interactions, they can trust that a trading partner is legitimate because due diligence has been conducted that proves identity. The app is easy to get up and running and has already increased efficiencies.鈥�

J眉rgens added that the app鈥檚 interoperability with different systems is designed to help meet regulatory mandates around electronic data sharing, easing collaboration between trusted partners along the clinical supply chain.

Digitalized Business Innovation

Eliminating counterfeit drugs in the legitimate supply chain is just the beginning of what鈥檚 possible in a fully digitalized life sciences supply chain. Pharmaceutical companies will be able to bring in and ramp up new, trusted suppliers faster. Intelligence will only grow with greater automation for business and patient value.

Follow me @smgaler.

Industry innovation has been a fascinating topic over the last few years. It鈥檚 impossible to ignore how companies create new offerings and experiences that dramatically shift how an industry 鈥� or in some cases, multiple industries 鈥� operates and how people live. Such groundbreaking changes are usually built with an appreciation of existing data and technologies and through a desire to do things better in terms of product safety, supply chain optimization, and business finances.

I鈥檝e been very fortunate to experience the power of such industry innovation through the Customer Innovation & Maintenance team as part of the Customer Solution Support & Innovation organization at 麻豆原创. For years, we have worked with various organizations to navigate existing crises, address emerging challenges, and deliver new opportunities for the world. In this article, I will discuss three of our latest projects.

Saving People鈥檚 Lives by Reducing Counterfeit Drugs

One prime example of our efforts is tackling a global menace that impacts the entire world: counterfeit pharmaceuticals. Many falsified or substandard medicines contain dangerous ingredients, such as heavy metals, highway paint, and rat poison, that worsen people鈥檚 health conditions and create new diseases. As a result, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that more than yearly from these snake oil cures.

For years, governments have initiated legislation and regulations to criminalize and control the production and distribution of counterfeit drugs. However, my team discovered that the lack of a rigorous, universal network makes it difficult to curtail the problem often hidden within complex supply chains and sophisticated packaging.

Based on input from 麻豆原创 customers in the life sciences industry and working with 麻豆原创 industry experts on this international challenge, we developed . The industry network hub enables pharmaceutical firms to share product information for traceability and verification across the supply network and with government regulators. Running on and leveraging 麻豆原创 Blockchain Business Services, it is the first public-cloud, industry-specific business network used by more than 45 pharmaceutical firms, over 1,500 trading partners, and 80% of COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers.

But our contribution to the fight against counterfeit drugs is far from over. We are working toward adding aid workers from organizations 鈥� such as the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders 鈥� to the hub so they can verify critical medicines and vaccines on the fly in low- to middle-income countries. This innovation is accomplished by integrating the hub into the application.

Accelerating the Development of Lifesaving Therapies

Another barrier to delivering large quantities of medical therapies quickly, efficiently, and safely is the structure of the traditional clinical supply chain. During the COVID-19 pandemic, supply chain resilience was highlighted as a critical requirement for providing lifesaving vaccines, prophylactics, and therapies created through industry-wide collaboration and a patient-centric focus.

To accelerate clinical R&D and time to value, my team worked with Roche, Tenthpin, and more than 25 additional customers and vendors connected to the pharmaceutical sector. Together, we reimagined clinical supply operations and brought to life a digital transformation of the entire life sciences ecosystem by developing the solution.

This next-generation cloud solution enables faster clinical supply cycle times, fewer inventory overages, and better-informed decision-making by providing accurate insights into forecasted demand and clinical site stock levels. It is also a milestone in the industry鈥檚 adoption of the cloud, facilitating end-to-end process operations and visibility to plan, source, manufacture, distribute, and reconcile supplies for clinical R&D. In addition, the solution helps address the blinding and randomization needs of clinical trials during the manufacturing, packaging, labeling, and shipment of clinical supplies to hospitals and clinics.

Meeting Financing Needs to Boost Growth

In addition to counterfeit drugs and the need for resilience, supply chain volatility and turbulence is providing the impetus for innovation. This reality is prompting capital investments including end-to-end due diligence and product tracing services; machines and plant setups that improve environmental impacts; and networks for finding, vetting, and onboarding new suppliers quickly.

Incorporating all these innovations into business operations 鈥� regardless of ecosystem size and geographic reach 鈥� requires money that many companies may not have immediately on hand. But to meet those finance needs, businesses and banks need to connect with each other smoothly, quickly, and securely without introducing more work and complexity to finance and treasury processes.

By delivering the solution, we play a key role in increasing the reliability of relationships between companies and their banks. Built on top of 麻豆原创 Business Technology Platform, the solution creates a multi-bank, digital channel between each party鈥檚 enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems to embed Electronic Banking Internet Communication Standard (EBICS) and SWIFT connectivity into the remote data transfer of payment transactions.

In return, treasury operations can be refined and simplified by updating payment status and cash positions in real time across business and bank ERP systems. 麻豆原创 Multi-Bank Connectivity can automate manual, error-prone steps associated with the execution and reconciliation of payments, order-to-cash applications, and order entry documents 鈥� helping to increase control, efficiency, and transparency.

Helping the World Run Better 鈥� One Innovation at a Time

The news headlines running across our screens every day prove that industry innovation is far from done. Unfortunately, no person, organization, or business carries the ultimate wisdom to solve every problem single-handedly. But if industry practitioners, business and technology experts, thought leaders, and inspired problem-solvers collaborate toward a common goal, a better future can be possible for everyone.

It is this vision that guides my leadership of Customer Solution Support & Innovation. My team of experts continuously looks for opportunities to do better for our customers, business, and global neighbors. And with the feedback and knowledge shared during every interaction, we look forward to working side by side with our customers and partners to provide the digital capabilities they need to make the world a better place 鈥� today and in the future.

Andreas Heckmann is executive vice president of Product Engineering and head of Customer Solution Support and Innovation at 麻豆原创. Follow him on and .

Counterfeit versions of biopharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences鈥� HIV medicines ended up on pharmacy shelves and in patients鈥� hands, according to court documents recently released.

Gilead pointed to a network of small drug suppliers and distributors that tampered with packaging and falsified the medications鈥� pedigree — the documentation that comes with drugs and is meant to authenticate them. The network ultimately sold 85,247 counterfeit bottles of branded medications worth more than $250 million.

麻豆原创’s Take

In the U.S., once a drug is sold to a wholesaler, the pharmaceutical maker does not know where it goes. European regulations led to the creation of a system to store and share such information, but the U.S. Drug Supply Chain Security Act of 2013 doesn鈥檛 require the pharmaceutical industry to implement one until 2023.

鈥淚n Europe, they’re set up today where pharmacies could do a verification,鈥� said Kevin Brophy, 麻豆原创 life sciences industry advisor at 麻豆原创. 鈥淵ou can’t do verification here.鈥�

What the U.S. does have right now, Brophy says, is a 鈥渢rack and trace鈥� system for drug returns. By borrowing some tactics and technology from that approach, the pharmaceutical industry could create a system could prevent counterfeits from entering the system in the first place, Brophy said.

In fact, it鈥檚 likely that by next year, the pedigree documentation system will be improved. 鈥淭echnology has a big play here to help with the holes we just saw in the system, and information holes will be improved,鈥� Brophy said.

On deck is the use of an information collaboration hub, where crucial information can be accessed to trace drug shipments. Beyond that, technology is being developed that would create a passive system, which would not require a suspicious pharmacist to act to verify the product authenticity. Instead, that data would be standard with other product-specific information

Further innovation could come with the use of blockchain technology, which today is used to track and trace drug returns. Among other things, blockchain allows all parties to enter and see exactly where a product is at any given time in the returns process. 聽That can be used to enhance a tracking system for sales.

鈥淵ou can embed things into a blockchain to provide 100% verification on a scan of something,鈥� Brophy said.

Contact:
Joellen Perry, Head of Global Public Relations, 麻豆原创
+1 (626) 265-0370, joellen.perry@sap.com, PST

Here, meet the finalists in the Products and Technology category.

The Hasso Plattner Founders鈥� Award is the highest
employee recognition at 麻豆原创, awarded annually by the CEO
to an individual or a team.

Finalist: GreenToken by 麻豆原创

Eighty percent of the world鈥檚 palm oil originates from Indonesia and Malaysia. While some of it is being sustainably sourced in sustainable fair-trade plantations and small holdings, much is also being harvested on recently deforested land. How can you tell one from the other?

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The GreenToken by 麻豆原创 solution was designed to address this issue by providing a new level of transparency into complex raw material supply chains.

鈥淚n 2019 a group of 麻豆原创 palm oil customers approached us with this very problem 鈥� they wanted a robust solution to maintain facts across the value chain from smallholder to end customer,鈥� says GreenToken Co-Founder James Veale. 鈥淭raditional batch-based inventory systems with their simple rules don鈥檛 truly reflect the exact makeup of a raw material inventory, which may be a mix of sustainable and non-sustainable sources. At scale, we would be dealing with millions of batches.鈥�

GreenToken instead uses a digital twin token to represent a fixed and usually small amount of the raw material. Records are kept on a blockchain ledger, and as the material moves along the supply chain GreenToken passes the equivalent number of tokens that represent the volume of material moved, from one supply chain actor鈥檚 wallet to another. This creates a tracing history — an immutable chain of custody that adds complete supply chain transparency and makes the data trustworthy.

Transforming the World Economy

GreenToken鈥檚 elegant yet powerful design has found applications in many industries. The tokens can carry information on any kind of raw materials to help answer a variety of questions: 鈥淎re these food crops sustainably sourced? Has this cobalt been mined free of child labor? Is this plastic recycled with a high percentage coming from molecular recycling of plastic waste?鈥�

With over 77% of the world鈥檚 manufactured goods passing through an 麻豆原创 system, GreenToken is receiving huge interest from 麻豆原创 customers under increasing pressure from both legislation and their own customer base to prove that their raw material sourcing, processing, and supply chain practices are the best that they can be.

鈥淕reenToken is 麻豆原创鈥檚 answer to that,鈥� says Nitin Jain, GreenToken co-founder. 鈥淲e have found a truly innovative use for tokens on a blockchain ledger that gives transparency to these formerly opaque raw material supply chains. GreenToken鈥檚 purpose is to help the world transform to a sustainable and circular economy — and our innovation has made it available in the cloud using simple, frictionless browser-based interfaces.鈥�

Finalist Fast Facts

• Submission Title: GreenToken by 麻豆原创
• Team: Nitin Jain in Canada and James Veale in Australia, co-founders, with a global team of 18, including full-time employees and fellows spread across Asia-Pacific Japan, Europe, and North America regions
• Number of employees: 20
• Achievement: Developed an elegant yet powerful method to add complete supply chain transparency to previously opaque raw material supply chains using digital twin tokens on a blockchain ledger. The solution works for any raw material supply chain. The team is currently deploying the system in the U.S. and Europe to prove that plastic has a high degree of circular recycled content.
• Impact: GreenToken allows 麻豆原创 customers to not only measure and make claims on their current sustainable, ethical, and circular sourcing practices, but also use their procurement spending power to promote good supply chains over bad.

Finalist: Ecosilient

While optimizing resources and capacities is not exactly a new business challenge, B2B circular sharing platform Ecosilient aims to commodify demand, supply, and services, connecting organizations in a community to generate value more efficiently and sustainably with special focus on existing resources and capacities.

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Ecosilient helps businesses leverage resources such as obsolete assets, surplus inventory, waste, and other byproducts into a circular economy. It creates a community layer based on enterprise resource planning (ERP) to enable this growing demand for businesses, stakeholders, and investors to make more responsible decisions that drive meaningful impact on critical issues.

Ecosilient Founder Avital Ben-Natan says the team鈥檚 mission is to 鈥渄ecouple economic growth from natural extraction and corrosive business practices. It鈥檚 about creating a trust platform to discover and facilitate collaboration opportunities around shared values.鈥�

The goal is no less than to address interlinked problems like the climate crisis, social inequities, or broken supply chains. Ecosilient serves as a framework for evolving 麻豆原创’s core technologies, data, and its global ecosystem into an engine for a sustainable economy.

Users will be able to work with 麻豆原创 software as they are accustomed — sourcing materials, signing contracts, tracing their shipping, and managing their inventories. 鈥淏ut with Ecosilient,鈥� Ben-Natan says, 鈥渢here is this additional layer in our software that users can trust will guide them to make responsible choices — to do more and better with less.鈥�

Leading the Sustainable Economy

Fostered within the 麻豆原创 Intrapreneurs program, the idea of Ecosilient resonated with many people at 麻豆原创 from the start and attracted like-minded employees willing to engage in their spare time. 鈥淓ven though few of us have ever been in the same room, we鈥檝e all become very close while building Ecosilient over the last one and a half years.鈥�

Ben-Natan says names the impact of climate change as his team鈥檚 motivation. 鈥淎s parents, we feel responsible for the future of our kids and our communities. We have to answer the challenges that we face as a species, but also as a planet and as an economy, and find an appropriate response.鈥�

The team considers its solution as a natural evolution of what 麻豆原创 stands for: to create order in chaos, to create opportunities and collaboration, to create a fair, responsible, and ultimately more efficient economy.

But Ecosilient is also a way for 麻豆原创 to innovate its own infrastructure and the way it operates as a company, as Ben-Natan stresses: 鈥淚t’s about creating a fundamental direction for 麻豆原创 to lead in the sustainable economy.鈥�

Finalist Fast Facts

• Submission Title: Ecosilient, the B2B Circular Sharing Platform
• Team: Avital Ben Natan, Umesh Shekar
• Number of employees: More than 20, with engineers, designers, innovation specialists, and mentors that have contributed to the business model, design thinking, demo, MVP, and customer engagement, and with special thanks to New Ventures and Technologies, Services IMM, and 麻豆原创 Experience Garage for platforming.
• Achievement: Leveraged market research and data analysis to identify target industries and organizations for freight pooling; implemented a WIP MVP and a demo for a sustainable shipping network; started customer engagement and GTM with companies like Unilever, Bechtle, Steelcase, Cargill, and others.
• Impact: Ecosilient helps companies increase resource efficiency while promoting a sustainable economy by engaging the ecosystem to create shared value.

Finalist: 麻豆原创 Information Collaboration Hub for Life Sciences

In recent years, the world has seen the issue of drug counterfeiting increase dramatically. In Africa alone, over 120,000 people die each year because they are being treated with fake malaria medication. It is estimated that currently over 50% of the drugs in Africa are counterfeit.

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Enter 麻豆原创 Information Collaboration Hub for Life Sciences: this industry network based on software-as-a-service (SaaS) helps 麻豆原创 pharmaceutical customers share information on their pharmaceutical products with supply chain partners and government agencies to enable traceability and verification of individual product packs in these markets.

鈥淚t was really a joint effort with plenty of input from 麻豆原创 customers that inspired the info hub,鈥� says Oliver Nuernberg, chief product owner, 麻豆原创 Life Sciences. 鈥淭hey pointed out the need for a global network that would minimize the effort by connecting once while sharing data with many participants.鈥�

Running on 麻豆原创 Business Technology Platform, the information hub leverages the platform鈥檚 integration services to exchange messages, 麻豆原创 Blockchain Business Services to make data available for verification, and portal services. In 2021, new innovative capabilities enabling the automation of onboarding processes and self-onboarding of trading partners were delivered to enable customers to efficiently onboard hundreds of partners in parallel for new markets.

The largest eight pharmaceutical manufacturers, and 14 of the top 20, are already using 麻豆原创 Information Collaboration Hub for Life Sciences, including most of the COVID-19 vaccines manufacturers.

Next, we plan to offer 麻豆原创 Information Collaboration Hub for Life Sciences together with 麻豆原创 Advanced Track and Trace for Pharmaceuticals to enable aid workers from organizations such as the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders to verify, for example, COVID-19 vaccines that they receive on the spot to聽 low- to middle-income countries.

Initially, the team was made up of just a handful of 麻豆原创 employees working out of Germany and Ireland. Today, there are more than 50 team members from the Customer Innovation & Maintenance organization, mainly located in India, who develop and operate the solution as well as help onboard customers and their business partners.

Amba Bisht, senior developer for Engineering in Customer Innovation & Maintenance, says: 鈥淲hat鈥檚 so rewarding about working on this project is how it really brings the spirit of 麻豆原创 — to make the world run better — to life, because by increasing security in the pharmaceutical supply chain and preventing counterfeit medication from reaching patients, 麻豆原创 Information Collaboration Hub for Life Sciences may ultimately save lives.鈥�

Finalist Fast Facts

• Submission Title: 麻豆原创 Information Collaboration Hub for Life Sciences, Saving Lives One Serial Number at a Time
• Team: Oliver Nuernberg, Martin Janssen, Dennis Keilbach, Vincent Varain, Sandeep Kumar Dikshit, Shashank Goyal, Amba Bisht, Anil Kumar Suresh, Geetha Ranjani G M, Athul Umesh
• Number of employees: More than 50
• Achievement: Global network with the eight largest pharmaceutical companies and 14 of the top 20, most COVID-19 vaccine manufactures, over 1,000 live trading partners. The hub currently hosts 2.2 billion product packs in the blockchain for verification in the U.S. market, manages tens of thousands of messages reported to government agencies, such as those in the EU, Russia, Brazil, and other markets, every day, all to prevent counterfeit products being introduced into the legitimate supply chain.
• Impact: Increase patient safety by authenticating pharmaceutical products, thus avoiding counterfeit drugs reaching patients; increase sustainability by reducing drug wastage.

The smart app will allow U.S. law enforcement officials across the country to scan the 2D barcode on Boehringer Ingelheim-manufactured life-enhancing medications and authenticate them before the medicines reach patients.

鈥淭he law enforcement smart app utilizes 麻豆原创鈥檚 scalable and secure blockchain solution for manufacturers to drastically improve the pharmaceutical supply chain from start to finish,鈥� said 麻豆原创鈥檚 global GM for Consumer Industries, Matt Laukaitis. 鈥淎s this app demonstrates, vertical industry expertise is a critical success factor in delivering innovations to protect patients and ensure access to authentic, life-enhancing medicines.鈥�

Passed into law in 2013, the U.S. Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA) aimed to boost the FDA鈥檚 ability to protect U.S. patients by developing a connected, digital system to trace prescription drugs throughout the country and identify counterfeit, stolen or contaminated medicine before it reached the hands of consumers.

麻豆原创鈥檚 smart app is a major step in achieving the vision of the DSCSA and is vital to protecting communities and patient safety. When counterfeit drugs are released into the supply chain, vulnerable patients and marginalized populations with limited access to safe, authentic and affordable medicines bear the brunt of the impact.

鈥淧atient safety is our top priority at our family-owned company, and unverified pharmaceuticals, especially amid a global pandemic, pose a significant threat to the safety and security of both patients and healthcare providers,鈥� said Aaron Graham, Executive Director, Brand Safety & Security, Boehringer Ingelheim. 鈥溌槎乖粹�檚 blockchain-based solution allows our team to safeguard against illicit and unsafe medicines reaching the hands of those who need medicine the most.鈥�

This technology builds on 麻豆原创鈥檚 previous efforts to eliminate counterfeit products with 麻豆原创 Information Collaboration Hub for Life Sciences, a blockchain-technology tool that allows users to authenticate pharmaceutical packaging as it moves between manufacturers, U.S. wholesalers and U.S. hospitals and pharmacies.

To learn more, watch a .

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Any statements contained in this document that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements as defined in the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as 鈥渁nticipate,鈥� 鈥渂elieve,鈥� 鈥渆stimate,鈥� 鈥渆xpect,鈥� 鈥渇orecast,鈥� 鈥渋ntend,鈥� 鈥渕ay,鈥� 鈥減lan,鈥� 鈥減roject,鈥� 鈥減redict,鈥� 鈥渟hould鈥� and 鈥渨ill鈥� and similar expressions as they relate to 麻豆原创 are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. 麻豆原创 undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. The factors that could affect 麻豆原创’s future financial results are discussed more fully in 麻豆原创’s filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), including 麻豆原创’s most recent Annual Report on Form 20-F filed with the SEC. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of their dates.
漏 2021 麻豆原创 SE. All rights reserved.
麻豆原创 and other 麻豆原创 products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of 麻豆原创 SE in Germany and other countries. Please see for additional trademark information and notices.

In response, hospitals, insurers, and other healthcare organizations are linking drug therapy and medical device usage and payment to performance guarantees while trying to own more services to reduce costs. Enter business networks, where healthcare professionals can work together for greater transparency across the entire .

鈥淪uppose someone gets lab work completed for their tumor. The hospital lab ships the blood to experts at the biopharmaceutical company who create a drug for individualized treatment,鈥� said John Murray, strategic director for Life Sciences at 麻豆原创. 鈥淭he business network securely manages the chain of identity and custody between patient and healthcare provider to manufacturer and back. Transparency can help organizations better meet drug therapy performance guarantees.鈥�

Life Science Business Network Provides Supply Chain Visibility

When drug manufacturers know where their shipments are and need to be in real time, they can monitor progress against performance guarantees and make decisions to prevent problems. For example, during the initial COVID-19 vaccine distribution, bad weather grounded some airplanes, delaying shipments and the rollout of inoculations. With no transparency between flight updates and local vaccine sites, patients, healthcare providers, and government leaders had no way to quickly understand the roadblocks and make alternate plans. Healthcare workers turned away frustrated people who had shown up for scheduled appointments, while policy leaders had no answers.

鈥淎 life science business network would create an end-to-end process beginning with individual patients, involving researchers, manufacturers, as well as transportation and distribution to healthcare practitioners and patients, all the way through someone鈥檚 medical outcomes, which is the measure for everyone on the supply chain,鈥� said Murray. 鈥淭his is central to 麻豆原创鈥檚 vision. Our solutions are already the backbone running many life science organizations, and we now have the opportunity to bring partners together in one connected business network.鈥�

One example is that can track medical and other supplies and business processes, comparing planned against actual milestones across business partners and multiple disparate systems. Leading pharmaceutical companies worldwide are using the hub. But that鈥檚 just the beginning.

鈥淭he long-term vision is to harmonize all of these separate business networks into one life science network so that it becomes a set of services for partners who can also interface with data across enterprise systems,鈥� said Murray. 鈥淲inning businesses will have clear supply chain visibility from maker to user, meaning patients whose medical results and lives improve.鈥�

Making Personalized Medicine Affordable

While bespoke anything automatically drives up the price tag, personalized medicine can become more affordable when organizations along the life science supply chain share the risk. It鈥檚 the only way to manage costs and make these highest quality treatments affordable for more people. Partnerships are certain to change business models across the life science industry.

鈥淎s organizations increasingly compete not on price, but patient outcomes, healthcare practitioners and manufacturers are adapting to performance guarantees,鈥� said Murray. 鈥淗ospitals know they won鈥檛 get reimbursed by Medicare in the U.S. if patients return with the same health conditions after being treated within certain time frames. One medical device manufacturer guarantees treatment prices that meet national health service billing caps if practitioners meet certain usage conditions.鈥�

Advancements in science, technology, and biopharma, including genome sequencing, are making tremendous improvements in individualized treatment plans. Personalized oncology drugs, wireless programmed pacemakers, 3D printing of specialized prosthetics, and other innovations have the potential to improve healthcare results for millions of people worldwide. Unlike some other industries, life sciences and healthcare are not just about business. In transforming to securely share data and knowledge more transparently through specialized business networks, the life science industry can fulfill the patient-centric promise of personalized medicine, improving the quality of life that鈥檚 deeply personal to each of us and our loved ones.

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The pilot is the first step toward establishing an industry-wide standard that will mitigate the risk of noncompliance for pharmaceutical companies.

The U.S. Drug Supply Chain Security Act () requires stakeholders in the pharmaceutical supply chain to interact with other entities for product verification and tracing even when they do not have a direct business relationship. DSCSA also requires such interactions to be limited to authorized trading partners.

One of the legal requirements of DSCSA is the verification of salable returns. This process is already established and supported by 麻豆原创 Information Collaboration Hub for Life Sciences, which executes tens of thousands of verifications every month. In order to provide our customers with the best solution for compliance with verifying the identity and authorized trading status of partners, 麻豆原创 chose an open, interoperable technology to validate all stakeholders in the pharmaceutical supply chain, including competitors.

Together with 麻豆原创 partner and wallet provider , verifiable credentials issuer , and leading pharmaceutical manufacturers and U.S. wholesalers, as well as other serialization solution providers, 麻豆原创 proved the ability of SSI to validate authorized trading partner status in indirect trade relationships as they occur during verification of product packs as required by U.S. legislation.

鈥淭he inability to verify the identity and authorized trading partner status of companies requesting verification put us at risk for noncompliance鈥� said Dave Mason, Novartis Americas Supply Chain Compliance and Serialization lead. 鈥淭he use of verifiable credentials ensures that we can establish trust across the supply chain and that we comply to the letter of the law.鈥�

As early as May 2021, this functionality will be available to existing customers of the 麻豆原创 Information Collaboration Hub for Life Sciences, to help ensure customers can achieve compliance quickly. To drive the utilization of SSI technology across the industry, 麻豆原创 also plans to participate in the newly founded Open Credentialing Initiative (OCI).

鈥淒igital transformation is critical for the life sciences industry to be able to quickly and effectively address public health needs,鈥� said Matt Laukaitis, 麻豆原创 Consumer Industries global general manager. 鈥淭his work is yet another example of 麻豆原创鈥檚 leadership with the life sciences ecosystem of partners and customers to address their industry-specific solution requirements. By establishing an efficient process for transmitting and verifying authorized trading partner status, the supply chain is more safe and secure.鈥�

Visit the . Follow 麻豆原创 on Twitter at .

Media Contact:
Stacy Ries, +1 (484) 619-0411, stacy.ries@sap.com, ET
麻豆原创 麻豆原创 Room; press@sap.com

Any statements contained in this document that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements as defined in the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as 鈥渁nticipate,鈥� 鈥渂elieve,鈥� 鈥渆stimate,鈥� 鈥渆xpect,鈥� 鈥渇orecast,鈥� 鈥渋ntend,鈥� 鈥渕ay,鈥� 鈥減lan,鈥� 鈥減roject,鈥� 鈥減redict,鈥� 鈥渟hould鈥� and 鈥渨ill鈥� and similar expressions as they relate to 麻豆原创 are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. 麻豆原创 undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. The factors that could affect 麻豆原创’s future financial results are discussed more fully in 麻豆原创’s filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), including 麻豆原创’s most recent Annual Report on Form 20-F filed with the SEC. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of their dates.
漏 2021 麻豆原创 SE. All rights reserved.
麻豆原创 and other 麻豆原创 products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of 麻豆原创 SE in Germany and other countries. Please see for additional trademark information and notices.

Vaccines require certain storage conditions to maintain their effectiveness. To ensure they remain effective despite , logistics service providers need robust processes, trained personnel, proper facilities and equipment, and a robust delivery network to cope with the staggering volume of shipments.

And this is where we at 麻豆原创 are ready to support.

Moderna is a clinical stage biotechnology company that pioneers messenger RNA (mRNA) therapeutics and vaccines to create a new generation of transformative medicines for patients. One of them is mRNA-1273, a vaccine candidate against COVID-19. Moderna is running 麻豆原创 Digital Supply Chain solutions to help with the serialization and distribution of a potential COVID-19 vaccine.

is helping Moderna to comply with international legislation intended to prevent counterfeit medicines to reach patients. The application provides a corporate serialization repository, serial number management, and regulatory reporting capabilities. To enable collaboration with its supply chain partners, namely contract manufacturers and wholesalers, Moderna leverages 麻豆原创 Information Collaboration Hub for Life Sciences, a public cloud network that enables collaboration for pharmaceutical supply chain trading partners.

It uses a digital network built on 麻豆原创 Cloud Platform and enables trading partners to exchange large amounts of serialization and associated traceability data. To comply with U.S. legislation that includes the verification of pharmaceutical product packs in case of returns or apparently suspect products, the network includes a blockchain-based verification repository to help eliminate counterfeit products along the pharmaceutical supply chain.

Manufacturers push data into blockchain using Electronic Product Code Information Services (EPCIS) messages, a global standard for creating and sharing visibility event data, both within and across enterprises. Wholesale distributors then can execute verification requests against the blockchain-based repository. By now, 麻豆原创 Information Collaboration Hub for Life Sciences already processes over 70% of the overall drug U.S.-volume for verification.

Because these solutions are integrated into Moderna鈥檚 backbone consisting of 麻豆原创 ERP and supply chain management software, the company has a holistic view over its end-to-end processes.

But we are not stopping here. To support our customers in withstanding the high market dynamics and always staying one step ahead of change, we continue to co-innovate with our customers in all industries. This way, we ensure that we deliver the right solutions at the right time.

No doubt, these are unprecedented times. Never before have scientists and pharmaceutical companies focused so intently on the development of a vaccine both with manpower and money. Never before was the urge to deliver more pressing. And never before was our chance to truly help the world run better and improve people鈥檚 lives greater.

In these times, intelligent enterprises can make a difference. The development of a new vaccine within just one year is an unbelievable accomplishment, and we at 麻豆原创 are ready to help deliver it to all parts of the world.

Christian Klein is CEO of 麻豆原创.
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麻豆原创 solutions are designed to help governments, healthcare organizations, life sciences companies, medical device manufacturers, and distributors manage the delivery network for safe and efficient vaccine delivery to the communities.

These stakeholders are working hard to simultaneously mitigate public health risks, stabilize economies, and support life-saving vaccine approval. Being able to rely on 麻豆原创 solutions to manage resources and have transparency into a fully connected supply chain will be a key to success for national and global organizations. 麻豆原创 tools better position stakeholders to overcome potential resource and supply constraints, quickly adapt to changes, drive accountability, monitor vaccine access equity, and increase constituent trust.

The VCH also includes the , which helps governments — from state and local to the largest nationally — prioritize who gets vaccinated, gauge sentiment about being vaccinated to encourage greater adoption, schedule vaccinations, and track patients after vaccination for any potential side effects and follow-ups. It also creates a digital “vaccine passport” that could be shared as necessary with schools, employers, etc., depending on local policies.

麻豆原创 solutions address the following areas of vaccine distribution and tracking:

Frontline Healthcare
麻豆原创 allows medical staff to stay better informed and enable timely and efficient decision-making, thus helping improve hospital wait times, hospital throughput, and access to quality care for vulnerable populations. 聽麻豆原创 also provides the tools and apps for governments to more effectively conduct tracing of known and, anonymously, of unknown contacts to interrupt the chain of COVID-19 infections.

Vaccine Manufacturing
麻豆原创 helps with solutions to protect against counterfeit vaccines, provides vaccine manufacturers the capability to comply with serialization regulations across multiple jurisdictions, and supports vaccine production tracking.

Vaccine Distribution
麻豆原创 provides a seamless experience for governments worldwide to publicly fund and order vaccines for their constituents. 麻豆原创 solutions provide a comprehensive view of vaccine program management, allowing governments to manage inventory, model supply chain network constraints, assess risks, and intervene when necessary. Supply chain network planning will enable governments and industry partners to more easily pivot and scale efforts as new vaccines emerge, and government requirements and guidelines change. 麻豆原创 solutions provide full transparency into the transport, storage, and dispensing of vaccines to support ensuring their safety and effectiveness.

Vaccine Administration
麻豆原创 provides the tools for governments to manage provider enrollment by jurisdiction, monitor resident trust and perception of the vaccine, manage patient assessment and scheduling based on public health guidelines and vaccine availability, and analyze constituent sentiment via the user-friendly dashboarding for monitoring, decision-making, and provider accountability.

Public Awareness
麻豆原创 provides the tools to gauge resident perception and sentiment by demographic groups, including marginalized communities, and align those insights with strategy and policy to address concerns and deliver a better experience quickly. This helps governments understand the resident sentiment around the vaccine and what actions they can take to help people feel more confident and safe about distributing, administering, and protecting the vaccine.

Managing the Workforce
麻豆原创 helps organizations support their team members as they adapt to working at home through rapid sentiment analysis. This will support organizations鈥� efforts to close experience gaps while maintaining business continuity. Additionally, 麻豆原创 provides the tools for businesses and governments to complete workforce planning and quickly staff up with full-time and contingent workforce to meet mission-critical, time-sensitive demands.

麻豆原创 solutions bring together vertical industry expertise to help governments and organizations address the challenges created by the COVID-19 pandemic from clinical support, vaccine supply chain, regulatory compliance, and how businesses respond and manage their workforces effectively.

Learn More

Maria Mizell works in Industry Executive Advisory at 麻豆原创.
John Murray is senior director of Strategic Initiatives for Life Sciences at 麻豆原创.

麻豆原创鈥檚 VCH is built on the industry-award-winning 麻豆原创 Information Collaboration Hub for Life Sciences. It covers the end-to-end process from manufacturing to controlled distribution to聽administration and聽postvaccine monitoring.

鈥淐OVID-19 has put a lot of pressure on the life sciences industry where they have realized a large gap in their supply chain strategy,鈥� said Michael Townsend, industry analyst at IDC.聽鈥淎 one-stop place for the life sciences industry to manage their vaccination procedures and tap into a source of suppliers, even those across industries, will help to fill this gap, to ensure patients obtain lifesaving drugs and devices.鈥�

Businesses that are part of the vaccine production process, from manufacturers, logistics service providers and pharma companies to wholesalers and dispensers, can run their critical vaccine processes on 麻豆原创 software. Building on its聽deep expertise in the industry, 麻豆原创 has designed the VCH as an extension to its business network鈥揺nabled drug supply chain, to help make collaboration among the network partners easy and monitor the order fulfillment of vaccines, all the way from vaccine suppliers to the dispensing units.

The VCH provides the critical network and technology capabilities required to effectively support large-scale vaccination programs and drug distribution while creating the backbone to better mitigate future emergencies.

To learn more, read “Shortening the Road to Recovery.”

Visit the . Follow 麻豆原创 on Twitter at .

Media Contact:
Stacy Ries, +1 (484) 619-0411, stacy.ries@sap.com, ET
麻豆原创 麻豆原创 Room; press@sap.com

Any statements contained in this document that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements as defined in the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as 鈥渁nticipate,鈥� 鈥渂elieve,鈥� 鈥渆stimate,鈥� 鈥渆xpect,鈥� 鈥渇orecast,鈥� 鈥渋ntend,鈥� 鈥渕ay,鈥� 鈥減lan,鈥� 鈥減roject,鈥� 鈥減redict,鈥� 鈥渟hould鈥� and 鈥渨ill鈥� and similar expressions as they relate to 麻豆原创 are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. 麻豆原创 undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. The factors that could affect 麻豆原创’s future financial results are discussed more fully in 麻豆原创’s filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), including 麻豆原创’s most recent Annual Report on Form 20-F filed with the SEC. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of their dates.
漏 2020 麻豆原创 SE. All rights reserved.
麻豆原创 and other 麻豆原创 products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of 麻豆原创 SE in Germany and other countries. Please see for additional trademark information and notices.

The so-called 鈥渂lockchain winter鈥� of 2018, which brought the hype surrounding the technology to an end, turned out to be very much to 麻豆原创鈥檚 advantage.

Read part one of this story here.

鈥淲e were able to spend 2019 consolidating our collective expertise and focusing much more closely on specific use cases in the enterprise environment,鈥� Torsten Zube, former head of the 麻豆原创 Innovation Center Network and current head of 麻豆原创 Cloud Platform Business Services, says. 鈥淲e saw that more and more businesses were looking seriously at blockchain and gaining a better understanding of the technology.鈥�

鈥淭he challenge for us is to ask the right questions at an early stage,鈥� says Thomas Uhde, head of the blockchain team at the 麻豆原创 Innovation Center Network in Potsdam. 鈥淚t often happens that customers come to us with a business problem and assume that the solution must lie in blockchain. We then have to look together at whether the problem we want to solve is in fact a case for blockchain or not.鈥�

One such case emerged from the need to verify the authenticity of returned drug products.

鈥淐ounterfeit, stolen, and contaminated pharmaceuticals products are a massive issue all over the world,鈥� says Oliver Nuernberg, chief product owner for 麻豆原创 Life Sciences. 鈥淲hich is why the United States introduced an act in 2013 requiring pharmaceuticals companies that trade on the U.S. market to perform strict checks on returned products prior to resale. A pharmaceuticals customer of ours, Merck Sharp and Dohme, wanted to invest in blockchain, and the blockchain use case was a perfect fit for them in this context.鈥�

The result was .

鈥淓very pharmaceutical product package delivered to the United States is registered on our solution鈥檚 blockchain,鈥� explains Nuernberg. 鈥淐ustomers no longer have to authenticate a returned product themselves; instead, they simply use an app that accesses the blockchain.鈥�

Alongside verification, traceability is one of the major benefits that when properly used, blockchain technology can deliver. The , a blockchain extension of the 麻豆原创 Logistics Business Network, provides an end-to-end picture of the supply chain in industries such as foods and pharmaceuticals.

鈥淚ncreasingly, people want to know where their food comes from,鈥� says Product Owner Christoph Huber. 鈥淲e proposed a cloud solution to customers, but they were uncomfortable with the idea that a company — in this case, 麻豆原创 — would be managing the database on which all the companies involved in production stored their information. They wanted the decentralized approach that blockchain allows.鈥�

This kind of scenario obviously requires all the partners to agree on the policies governing a blockchain network. 鈥淵ou don鈥檛 have to be a large customer with your own IT department to use blockchain,鈥� Uhde says.

That is demonstrated by the GS1 blockchain project for exchanging EUR-pallets. In a six-month pilot project, 30 parties, ranging from a market gardener with 20 employees to DHL and Beiersdorf,聽 were able to form and participate in a network.

However, as Uhde points out, 鈥渨hile the vision of all companies worldwide coming together in a single blockchain network is a nice one, it鈥檚 totally unrealistic. There will always be at least one business partner who doesn鈥檛 participate, which is what makes interoperability so important. It would be wrong for enterprise blockchain networks to end up simply creating bigger silos.鈥�

Blockchain was originally intended to function as a kind of database to which all the participants in a network have equal access. But certain business scenarios, such as third-party business transactions, expressly require that all partners do not have access to every detail of the supply chain.

鈥淲hat we have developed with customers instead is a kind of digital notary service on the blockchain, in which the focus is on validating data rather than exchanging it,鈥� Uhde explains.

Flexible digital collaboration tailored to specific use cases will be an important area of application for blockchain in the future.

Uhde describes the goal as a flexible collaboration network: 鈥淥nce it鈥檚 set up, the connection to business partners can be used for a wide range of scenarios, some containing blockchain, others not. Some partners will exchange non-critical data via blockchain, for automation scenarios, for example. For others, notarization will be sufficient.鈥�

Tokenization is another trend that the blockchain experts at 麻豆原创 are exploring.

鈥淓ssentially, tokenization refers to the exchange of assets other than money,鈥� Zube explains. 鈥淐arbon trading is a good example. In the future, products could be priced in euros or dollars, and in carbon values too. We鈥檇 pay in the normal way, but we鈥檇 have to have the corresponding carbon credits available, earned, for example, by planting trees.鈥�

The carbon value of a product can be calculated using product master data, transaction data, and so on — including the CO₂ emissions connected with the raw materials, transportation routes, machinery, and factory facilities involved in production.

鈥淭hat requires data on the CO₂ impact to be exchanged across all organizations in retail and supply chains,” Uhde says. “Blockchain technology can do precisely that.鈥�

And according to Zube, 鈥淭o use the terminology of Gartner hype cycles, we haven鈥檛 yet reached the 鈥楶lateau of Productivity,’ but we鈥檙e well on the way.鈥�