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In Foundries, Funding Announcement, Supply Chain Management

German asset monitoring start-up to expand globally with $6.35m fund

LiveEO, a German-based Earth Observation asset monitoring technology start-up, has secured €5.25 million ($6.35 million) in funding to expand its operations globally.

The Series A investment has been secured from venture capital firms btov Partners, Helen Ventures, DvH Ventures, and Motu Ventures as well as from deep technology investor Andreas Kupke.

Daniel Seidel, co-founder of LiveEO, said: “This funding round is a huge milestone for LiveEO. Over the last 3 years we’ve built up a unique technology stack to analyze earth observation data at scale and we now can realize many new revolutionary features on the basis of this tech backbone.”

LiveEO combines data acquired from satellite imagery and from other sources and then uses artificial intelligence to analyse the data to monitor critical infrastructures such as railways, electricity grids and pipelines.

The startup has plans to introduce their technology in other sectors including construction, mining, insurance, forestry, agriculture and finance.

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In Press, Berlin, Supply Chain Management

Cardano Foundation Announces Partnership With Supply Chain Traceability Solution Scantrust

The Cardano foundation has announced a partnership with Scantrust, a supply chain traceability solution, in order to streamline the supply chain management process, as well as optimising security.  

Scantrust is a company that uses QR codes to bring products online, and aims to turn products and packaging into a “direct connection with consumers”. The company provides protection from counterfeiting, supply chain awareness, and consumer engagement, using blockchain technology to secure, track, and create consumer interactivity with a QR code.

Current Scantrust partners include HP Indigo, Hyperledger, and SAP, and the company has worked with Fortune 500 companies and SMEs across 168 countries. 

One of the areas that blockchain technology has revolutionised is the supply chain. Blockchain solutions have allowed companies to trace, track, and empower the producer and consumer. A number of traceability companies have emerged in recent years, covering industries from food, textiles and high-end consumer products. What they share in common is the ability to create true transparency from the start of the supply chain all the way through to the consumer. 

Advancing innovation in blockchain technology has allowed companies to promote their ethical approach to consumer goods, increase transparency, and secure against counterfeiting. Frederik Gregaard, CEO of the Cardano Foundation, commented on the partnership with Scantrust: 

“Empowering trust and transparency across all industries and digital agreements is at the heart of the Cardano Foundation’s missions. I am proud of our Integrations team, who have worked tirelessly with Scantrust to deliver the first solution of its kind to leverage metadata on the Cardano blockchain. Together with Scantrust, we are helping brands to reconnect with their consumers, increase transparency in their supply chain, and fight counterfeit activity.”

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In Article, Supply Chain Management, Press

Verusen named a Top 10 Innovative Technology Companies in Georgia

The Technology Association of Georgia (TAG) has announced the Top 10 Innovative Technology Companies in Georgia. 

The Top 10 companies were selected from the Top 40 Innovative Technology Companies competition, sponsored by Comcast Businessand Cherry Bekaert, and will present at the 2021 Georgia Technology Summit on April 28 – 29.

“These companies demonstrate the amazing talent and innovation in Georgia’s technology industry today,” said Dennis Zakas, Georgia’s Top 40 Innovative Company Awards Chair. “We are eager to watch them continue to grow and contribute to Georgia’s economy.”

The 2021 Top 10 Innovative Companies are:

  • Codoxo, Chamblee – Codoxo builds AI solutions that help healthcare companies and agencies identify problems and act quickly to control costs with artificial intelligence.
  • Florence Healthcare, Midtown – Florence Healthcare is the leading platform for remote connectivity and electronic document workflow management in clinical research, with more than 8,500 research sites, sponsors and CROs in 30 countries.
  • MileAuto, Midtown – Mile Auto is a pay-per-mile auto insurance company using patented computer vision technologies to help low mileage drivers save money.
  • PadSplit, Downtown – PadSplit is an affordable housing tech startup that provides a house-sharing service for the workforce.
  • Roadie, Buckhead – Roadie is a same-day delivery platform that connects people with stuff to send to drivers already heading in the right direction.
  • Stord, Midtown – Stord operates the leading North American omnichannel logistics network using end-to-end logistics services designed to move product rapidly to your end customer—B2B or B2C—with pay-as-you-go pricing and infinite scalability.
  • Ternio, Alpharetta – Ternio is a global fintech platform built on blockchain that connects traditional enterprise, fintech, banking, systems with blockchain infrastructure giving real world utility to digital assets.
  • Verusen, Midtown – Verusen is a Supply Chain Intelligence company focused on materials management that uses AI to provide complex global supply chains material truth for data, inventory optimization and procurement intelligence.
  • Voxie, Alpharetta – Voxie is the conversational text marketing leader that helps retail, service, and restaurant passion brands connect with and learn from their customers in order to drive repeat purchase.
  • Ware2Go, Buckhead – Ware2Go, a UPS Company, is changing the traditional 3PL model to make 1-2-day delivery easy and affordable for all merchants.

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In Press, Supply Chain Management

Predicting ETAS Accurately

Through a global partnership with French transportation visibility specialist Shippeo, Krone Telematics can now accurately predict the estimated time of arrival (ETA) for every shipment. The collaboration is expected to yield further innovations.

Up to twelve hours in advance, the Krone Telematics technical monitoring system can accurately predict the arrival time of a truck. A cooperation with the European leader in real-time transportation visibility Shippeo makes this precise information possible. The estimated time of arrival (ETA) for a truck is much more difficult to calculate than for private parcel shipments, for example. This is because, in addition to traffic and weather conditions, it is influenced by many other parameters such as the duration of loading and unloading. Shippeo achieves the most accurate prediction of ETA on the market with machine learning and an algorithm that takes over 200 parameters into account. For Krone’s customers, this means they get reliable information about their shipments that they can use for planning and increasing efficiency.

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In ERP & Finance, Supply Chain Management

SAP Transportation Management System Merges with Sedna’s Software

The integration of SAP Transportation Management System (TMS) with Sedna Systems’ team collaboration and email management solution will allow shippers using both products to gain a whole new level of control over transportation management-related data.

Logistics operations have evolved significantly in recent years and the industry is now seeing more companies embracing digitalisation to ensure efficiency in their businesses. The newly announced partnership between SAP and Sedna Systems solidifies the software giant’s position as a leading provider of the latest technologies for the logistics industry. 

In October 2020, SAP has released an enhanced SAP Logistics Business Network that enables companies to jointly manage logistics transactions and obtain valuable insights across the complete value chain. The addition of new capabilities within the cloud-based global logistics network aims to increase value chain visibility, traceability, collaboration, and reach.

Stefan Sauer, Global Solution Lead for Ports, Terminals, and Shipping Lines at SAP, said in an interview that the company developed a proof of concept to test and evaluate the idea of merging SAP TMS with Sedna’s capabilities.

The integration will allow data that is normally locked away in an isolated email or within a TMS to be more accessible based on Sedna’s smart tagging system that provides cross-company transparency.

Sedna Systems Founder and CEO Bill Dobie mentioned that the company has had several integrations with SAP across its customer base, allowing clients using SAP solutions to organise email and prioritise emerging relevant information. Additionally, Sedna’s integration with SAP TMS is designed to unify all logistics-related conversations and documentation in one place.

“Like bulk logistics, these transactions and customer communications are managed through emails and siloed inboxes. The ‘cc effect’ and unstructured chat creates endless threads, repetitive and redundant conversations, and context catch-up that needlessly bloats email volume,” Dobie further explained.

Incorporating SAP Transportation Management System into Sedna’s Solution

SAP’s TMS is designed for both shippers and logistics service providers. It manages all areas of transportation processes within a company such as transportation planning and optimisation, freight tendering, and change management.

On the other hand, Sedna connects to SAP systems to create tags and import customers’ transactional information. The solution, which also integrates with SAP S/4HANA Cloud, allows messages that come into the email platform to be automatically tagged to the appropriate transactions so clients can maintain a full audit trail of their projects.

Lakshmi Baskaran, Vice President of Engineering at Sedna Systems, said:

“A customer order that is created in SAP Transportation Management is automatically integrated with Sedna.”

She explained that users can refer to the SAP customer order and the relevant data from their platform with a single click, real-time information about the order. Using the same connections, inbound documents received via email can be linked to other directions including SAP’s TMS.

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In Foundries, Article, Berlin, Supply Chain Management

Sustainable Farming: Agranimo Integrates with SAP BTP

Despite the ongoing debate of whether it’s a fruit or a vegetable, the avocado has been an export hit around the globe. Avocados are grown in the southern hemisphere but are immensely popular in countries where they cannot be harvested. There is also growing consumer awareness that intensive avocado farming leads to environmental issues in the countries of origin.

‘Driving through the rural areas of Chile, you will notice how severely the country has been going through a major drought during the last five to seven years,’ Nikita Gulin says. ‘Part of it is due to climate change, but it cannot be denied that intensive farming is adding to the problem.’ Chile’s GDP relies heavily on agriculture. Apart from avocados, food crops include blueberries, cherries, and walnuts. ‘Water efficiency is a huge topic for Chilean farmers and the country as a whole.’

For Gulin, Aganimo’s Russian-born founder and CEO, and his Chilean co-founder, CTO Sergio Esteban, this was an obvious problem to tackle.

‘In Chile, everybody knows someone working in the agricultural sector, whether it’s an uncle or the friend of a friend,’ Esteban says. ‘When we looked at the problem and solutions already available, it became clear that there was much room for improvement by means of technology – and we had the skills to do that.’

To combine their technical knowledge with research on agriculture, they made contact with academia. ‘The University of Chile immediately wanted to collaborate,’ Gulin says. Agranimo has 10 employees located in Chile, Russia, and Germany with backgrounds in technology, research, and practical experience in agriculture.

‘Chile is not the only country with this problem,’ Gulin explains, ‘It’s really all over the world – water is rare. From our first application for water efficiency, our vision grew as we expanded to more climate-related issues. Water is still one of the key components, but we are now working with any information that can be derived from climate and soil data.’

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In Foundries, Press, Portfolio News, Supply Chain Management

Verusen and NTT DATA GSL Form Business Alliance to Transform SAP Materials and Inventory Management Deployments Through AI

As manufacturers and businesses ramp up the digital transformation of their supply chains to meet challenging times during the pandemic, Verusen, the Atlanta startup that leverages artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML)  to build the intelligent, connected supply chain, and NTT DATA Global Solutions Corporation (NTT DATA GSL), a leading SAP partner in Japan, providing digital transformation and information technology services worldwide together with NTT DATA Group alliance, today announced their new business alliance.  The collaboration utilizes Verusen’s cloud-based AI platform and real–time inventory data management capabilities to strengthen and optimize customers’ existing SAP supply chain and inventory management implementations. 

Verusen’s purpose-built AI platform provides a supply chain solution that transforms material data and inventory optimization to bring “material truth” to organizations. By analyzing and visualizing the inventory information stored at different locations, the solution helps clients reduce their inventory, increase working capital and prevent opportunity loss due to either excess or deficiency of inventory. The relationship marks the debut of the Verusen cloud platform in the Japanese market.

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In Press, Press Release, Supply Chain Management

Rheaply Raises $8M to Scale the Circular Economy and Enable Businesses to Take Action Against Climate Change

Rheaply, a climate tech company that combines a resource-sharing network with a user-friendly asset management platform, today announced that it has raised $8M in a Series A round led by High Alpha, with investment from 100 Black Angels & Allies Fund, Concrete Rose Capital, Hyde Park Angels, M25, MCJ Collective, Morgan Stanley Multicultural Innovation Lab, Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund, and Salesforce Ventures. Rheaply’s platform eliminates potential waste by instituting the principles of a circular economy, a model that emphasizes “designing out waste and pollution, keeping products and materials in use, and regenerating natural systems.”

Rheaply’s Series A is one of the largest rounds ever raised by a Chicago startup with a Black founder, and the majority of new investors are impact funds.

In the U.S. economy, over $630B of physical workplace assets sit idle every year.2 Not knowing what assets exist and where they are frequently leads to inefficiencies in procurement practices, the inability to properly track and manage asset depreciation, and the purchase of duplicate assets, significantly impacting every organization’s bottom line. If never put to use, these assets will add over 60M tons of waste to landfill.

If you would like to know more about how Rheaply is helping Fortune 500 companies and the U.S. Federal Government better track and utilize their resources, visit rheaply.com.

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In Press, Portfolio News, Supply Chain Management

Supply Chain Recovery Index monitoring business recovery in Europe

Shippeo, the European leader in real-time supply chain visibility, releases today an update of its “Supply Chain Recovery Index”.

Shippeo tracks nearly 10 million transport orders every year, from 140,000 carriers operating in more than 3,000 industrial sites and warehouses across Europe. Thanks to this data, Shippeo has built a weekly index to measure the business recovery in 4 industrial sectors on a European scale.

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In Foundries, Press, San Francisco, Funding Announcement, Supply Chain Management

Verusen raises $8 million to reconcile supply chain data using AI

Atlanta, Georgia-based Verusen, a startup leveraging AI to build a connected supply chain, today raised $8 million in a series A round co-led by Forte Ventures and Flyover Capital. The company says it will put the funds toward R&D as it expands the size of its workforce.

A recent PricewaterhouseCoopers report anticipated that companies would have to address the implications of their supply chains in regions affected by the coronavirus. For instance, they might have to secure future air transportation as supply and capacity become available or buy ahead to procure much-needed inventory and raw materials.

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In Foundries, New York, Podcast, Supply Chain Management

Exploring How Diversity Fuels Innovation at the Intersection of Supply Chain, Technology, Sustainability, and Gender Equity with Sallie Jian

In episode 50, you’ll hear insights on top skills needed in the tech world, what’s driving leadership in global supply chains, the common threads of success in scaling innovation, and how to leverage the SDGs in your partnerships and hiring practices.

Listen as Sallie Jian shares why she decided to lead the SAP.iO NY foundry.

In Supply Chain Management, Fund, Press Coverage, Portfolio News, Funding Announcement

Shippeo Raises €20 Million to Provide Real-time Visibility Into the Global Supply Chain

Shippeo announced the closing of a €20 million Series B round co-lead by NGP Capital and ETF Partners with participation from Bpifrance Digital Ventures and Partech.

Shippeo provides predictive and real-time visibility into goods delivery. The AI-based platform aggregates data from hundreds of sources in real-time to calculate estimated time of arrival with 98% accuracy. Since its creation in 2014, Shippeo has successfully scaled its operations and is now servicing more than 50 large customers across 40 countries. The team has grown tenfold and Shippeo now employs 80 people in seven different offices across Europe.

Over the last year, Shippeo has increased its turnover by 300%, positioning itself as one of the fastest-growing start-ups in Europe.

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