SupplyChain Magazine November 2017 | Page 13

“ I think anything that engenders better trust and gives guarantees in a supply chain between businesses and between customers and businesses opens up borders ”

PAUL DEVLIN , General Manager for EMEA and MEE , SAP Ariba
“ The ledger is not stored in one place , it ’ s distributed throughout several-hundred systems globally so , today , it ’ s virtually impenetrable . “ If you think about some of the biggest issues that companies face , it is around provenance . It is around track and trace , it ’ s around recall of goods . Think of yourself as the buyer : ‘ I know that I bought something , but how can I actually testify to the provenance of the thing that I bought actually being the thing that arrives in my warehouse or on my doorstep ?’
“ If I then take that a stage further , with track and trace today we can be very clear that something which was ordered has actually arrived in the warehouse . What you can never be clear about , is ‘ was the thing that arrived in the warehouse the thing that actually shipped ?’.
“’ Or was I the victim of fraud ?’ So , something legitimate actually arrived but the thing that was actually shipped wasn ’ t what arrived in the warehouse .
“ This whole thing about provenance , actually being able to guarantee that the thing that you bought was what went into the warehouse and was the same thing that actually arrived , is where trust comes from .”
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