Supply Chain Management Archives • Page 5 of 11 • SAP.iO

SAP.iO In New York, San Francisco, Portfolio News, Supply Chain Management

Supply Chain Innovator Verusen Partners with Daivergent to Create Jobs in AI for People on the Autism Spectrum

While Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the supply chain marketplace is expected to reach $16.7B globally by 2027, human augmentation remains a critical component to success. This is why global supply chain innovator Verusen, and public benefit corporation for persons with autism and neurodiversity Daivergent, today unveiled their formal partnership to create innovative career opportunities in data and AI for neurodiverse workers.

As part of this partnership, Verusen is tapping a number of Daivergent’s candidates as data experts to assist with machine learning processes and further its mission of revolutionizing the way supply chains work. Employees trained by Daivergent tackle the seemingly impossible challenges of further developing AI and machine learning, specifically as they correlate to solving supply chain issues. Daivergent annotators provide significant value to Verusen by sharing annotations and training data for new and exploratory AI tasks, which improve outcomes.

Verusen Founder and CEO Paul Noble and Daivergent Co-Founder and CEO Byran Dai met through SAP.iO Foundries, SAP’s startup innovation program. They formed a special connection as both business leaders have family members on the autism spectrum.

“We are excited to announce our partnership with Daivergent and Byran, who leads an exceptional talent pool,” said Paul Noble, founder and CEO, Verusen. “Our partnership underscores the tremendous value this high potential but underutilized talent population provides and dispels the common misconception that AI takes jobs away. Daivergent trained Verusen employees are helping us solve the complex challenges the supply chain industry faces through the sophisticated use of existing data, and it’s a massive task. The result is a win-win partnership that underscores our commitment to ensuring and recognizing the value that diversity, equity, and inclusion bring to our company.”

ECommerce Tech Company Saara Inc Raises Seed Funding from 021 Capital

Saara Inc, an eCommerce technology company that addresses the issue of high product returns for online brands, has announced the closure of a seed funding round led by 021 Capital with additional participation from 9Unicorns and Lets Venture.

According to Crunchbase, South Asian venture capital firm 021 Capital has made 21 investments to date and has helped several startups expand, build a strong team and infrastructure and strengthen the supply chain ecosystem.

“One of the major challenges that the eCommerce industry faces are high returns. We are taking a unique approach using AI-ML that improves the bottom-line of businesses by reducing returns, helps them meet sustainability goals, and reduces their overhead costs. With this capital from our investors, Saara will continue to assist direct-to-consumer brands increase their profitability, introduce more market-disrupting products to build a stronger ecosystem,” said Sachin Garg, Saara CEO and Founder.

Shippeo’s Shipment Tracking ETA Accuracy Leaps Forward With a Giant 32% Improvement

Shippeo, a leading provider of global shipment visibility, has achieved a significant advancement in its predictive shipment ETA performance, aided by investments in new AI/ML infrastructure and sophisticated algorithms. As a result, shippers and logistics service providers are seeing improved accuracy and reliability of estimated times of arrival (ETAs) of their shipments, thereby increasing the efficiency and predictability of their supply chains.

he recent challenges caused by major supply chain disruptions have reaffirmed the need for organisations to improve shipment traceability on a global scale. Although it has never been easier to track shipments travelling throughout the world in near real-time thanks to more affordable devices and better connectivity, the type of data that supply chain management values is changing.

Shippeo’s Chief Product Officer, Anand Medepalli, says: “The question supply chain managers are asking themselves is shifting from ‘where is my shipment’ at the macro level to a more granular ‘When will it arrive at the next stop?’ and ‘Are there any risks of a delay?’”. This means that the ability to predict shipment ETAs at a very granular level is increasingly becoming a must-have, critical capability for shippers.

This improved ETA brings a range of benefits to manufacturers. Shippeo customers report that having accurate ETA predictions for shipment arrival times improves team productivity at key delivery sites, while boosting KPI performance, increasing sales and, of course, raising customer satisfaction levels. At the same time, these manufacturers, many of which are operating globally, are decreasing stock-outs or production line halts by as much as 76%, as well as reducing late penalties by 25%, dwell times by 30% and reducing unexpected freight costs.

As with any algorithm, ETA accuracy depends heavily on the quality of data inputted, which is why Shippeo’s core R&D focus is to continually enhance the accuracy and reliability of the data feeding the ETA predictions. In its latest third release, in addition to data quality, the company has revamped its machine learning (ML) infrastructure, as well as the methodologies and models its data scientists and ML engineers use. The result is an impressive 32% improvement in ETA accuracy up to 48 hours before a scheduled delivery.

Rheaply redefines circular economy in architecture

When a building gets demolished, or refurbished, what happens to its parts? They might get destroyed, or just thrown away to the back of a junkyard, never to be seen again – or, they will get reused. And it’s that last option that Garry Cooper Jr, founder of Rheaply, decided to tackle when he launched his enterprise asset management venture in 2016. Rheaply is a digital platform that serves the circular economy, essentially enabling the rehoming of parts of buildings and equipment just before a structure is torn down, placing them in new, local buildings in construction, in a bid to enhance upcycling, sustainable architecture and local enterprise.

Ohio-born Cooper is now based in Chicago and the idea to found Rheaply was born there, thanks to his keen observation skills and entrepreneurial mind (while now he operates in the construction and architecture world, his background is in science). ‘It was super organic,’ he says. ‘I came to Chicago in 2008, and studied at Northwestern University, trying to find a cure for Parkinson’s Disease. I noticed in our lab we had lots of material that we were not using, from chairs, to plastics, chemicals, and I kept hearing people saying, oh if only I had this or that, and I knew we had whatever they needed somewhere in our closet. So I started a resource sharing platform – it was basically a cart!’

Revuze’s New Market Research Solution “Sentimate” Nominated for Two Customer Experience Awards

Sentimate, the first-ever free, self-service market research platform developed by Revuze, enables brands of all sizes to perform customer experience research.

Revuze, the provider of AI-powered market research for the world’s biggest brands, has been nominated in two categories at the inaugural edition of the US Customer Experience Awards, which will culminate in an online ceremony on June 30, 2022. The awards for which Revuze is competing as a finalist are Best Innovation in CX and Best Technology.

Revuze’s new solution, Sentimate, is the first-ever free platform that delivers instant access to market research analysis on over 300,000 products. With Sentimate, product companies of all sizes — including small and medium-sized businesses, as well as business individuals — can easily monitor their customers’ experiences, identify emerging trends, and perform many research tasks on any product, including SWOT analysis, competitive analysis, and category analysis.

“We are honored to be nominated at the US Customer Experience Awards for these two important categories,” said Boaz Grinvald, CEO of Revuze. “With the unprecedented boom in eCommerce that our society is experiencing, finding innovative ways to monitor customer experience has become critical. Brands are on the lookout for new ways to keep up with their market dynamics; our solution, Sentimate, fills one of the big gaps of traditional market research.”

“Sentimate is destined to change the game for product companies committed to improving their customer experience, as well as individual analysts searching for insights on consumer products, as it is the first AI-powered tool capable of substituting lengthy and costly research methods, including focus groups,” Grinvald continued.

As businesses strive to become more customer centric, it’s imperative for them to have the ability to perform research tasks on a daily basis in order to make informed, data-driven business decisions. Sentimate achieves this by always being up to date and accessible at any time.

SAP.iO Launches Resilient Supply Chain Startup Program in Collaboration with Accenture

April 06, 2022 — SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) has launched a virtual startup program focused on building a resilient supply chain at the SAP.iO Foundries Munich and Tel Aviv. A jury of experts from SAP and Accenture, alongside SAP partners and SAP customers including Siemens, Porsche Digital selected 12 startups from four supply chain domains to join the program.

The program builds upon SAP and Accenture’s long-standing partnership and shared commitment to using technology to help the world build a more resilient Supply Chain. The startups in this cohort will receive curated mentorship, access to SAP technology and application programming interfaces (APIs), and exposure to SAP and Accenture customers to develop high-impact proofs of concept.

Supply chain operations often represent the greatest area for risk and loss in many companies. By their nature, supply chains are globally dispersed and complex in their functionality. This makes them especially vulnerable to risk. Resilient supply chain technologies reduce risk by allowing visibility into all operations across the network – and empowering businesses to optimize and adapt their processes and logistics in real-time.

To address these challenges in the world’s supply chains, SAP.iO Foundries Munich and Tel Aviv joined forces and introduced the “Resilient Supply Chain” program. The cohort is the largest to date. The startups will work with the Foundries as well as leading companies from various fields on integration and partnership with SAP.

According to Jan Gilg, President and Chief Product Officer SAP S/4HANA, “A resilient supply chain, with risk strategies in place, predicts, responds and recovers from unanticipated events by either returning to its original state or morphing into a state that is even better at profitably meeting customers’ needs. It is about using the right tools to make the right business decisions, even under pressure.”

Over the next 14 weeks, the startups will have access to curated mentorship from SAP executives, exposure to SAP® technology and application programming interfaces (APIs), and opportunities to collaborate with SAP customers around the world. Their work includes creating new partnerships and value propositions that help solve key supply chain challenges.

The following startups are participating in the program:

Business Planning & Resiliency

Bringoz – Intelligent delivery and distribution management system
Craft.co – Build a more resilient supply chain through deeper supplier intelligence
numi solutions GmbH – Enabling integrated and intelligent Supply Chain Decisions
Tacto – We build sustainable supply chains

Transportation Management

MIXMOVE AS – Pushing the boundaries of performance, efficiency and sustainability in logistics.
Portcast – Real-time predictive visibility and demand forecasting

Warehousing and fulfillment

CognitOps Inc. – Automate your warehouse management
Logidot – Optimize your industrial logistics and production with real-time tracking
Magazino GmbH – builds and develops intelligent, mobile robots that automate material supply in production logistics.
Picavi GmbH – Pick-by-Vision for cost reduction in your warehouse
Verity – Information and insights when and where you need them–powered by self-flying drones

Last-Mile Delivery

Milkman Technologies – Last-Mile is the new Retail

About SAP.iO
SAP.iO delivers new partnerships and products for SAP by accelerating and scaling startup innovation as well as incubating employee ventures. SAP.iO brings together innovators from every region, industry, and line of business to transform how businesses run. Since 2017, SAP.iO has helped 300+ external startups and internal ventures accelerate their growth while enabling thousands of SAP customers to access innovation. For more information, visit http://sap.io/.

SAP.iO In Berlin, Podcast, Supply Chain Management

Optimising Cash, Costs, And Service In Supply Planning – With Genlots Simon Schenker

Supply chain planning can often seem like a lot of trade-offs. Genlots is a company using Reinforcement Learning to optimise the triangle of cash, (inventory working capital and so on), costs, (prices, delivery, transportation, etc.), and service (customer service, or the service that you give to your production).

Tom Raftery, Global VP & Global IoT Evangelist @ SAP, invited Simon Schenker, Founder, and Co-CEO at Genlots to talk about their solution in supply planning, as well as their partnership with SAP.iO.

Listen to the Podcast Here…

SAP.iO In New York, Supply Chain Management, Sustainability

Queen of Raw and MIT Solve Release Fabric Footprint Impact Report

What if you knew the true cost of your clothing? Not just the price of the tag, but the cost to the planet as well? What if you can discover the amount of water, carbon emissions, chemicals, and water saved by each of your purchases? Did you know that one t-shirt takes an average of 700 gallons of water to produce? That’s enough clean water for one person to drink for three years. With the global textile market expected to hit $1.23 trillion by 2025, less than 1% of the material used to make clothing is recycled.

Now there’s a way to discover the sustainability score of each of your purchases via Queen of Raw’s marketplace. Queen of Raw now calculates the water, toxins, carbon emission, and waste saved by upcycling the $288 billion worth of excess textiles (raw materials and finished goods) rather than manufacturing new ones. Presented with sustainability metrics backed with authenticity on the blockchain, consumers can have a more engaging journey.

“Consumers want to see sustainability metrics when making sales decisions, and in fact, 43% Gen-Zers seek out companies with a solid sustainability reputation. With $360B in disposable income, this seems like a significant opportunity for brands and retailers,” Stephanie Benedetto, co-founder, and CEO, Queen of Raw, told CoinGeek.

Queen of Raw, together with MIT Solve, released a no-code mobile e-commerce impact measuring tool on the blockchain. The Fabric Footprint Impact Report meets the increasing consumer demand for greater transparency. It allows buyers, sellers, and consumers to see sustainability metrics quickly and easily where they can make informed choices with the swipe of a smartphone, track progress, and get rewarded for brand engagement. The impact report is also available to brands as a white-labeled offering, with a single sign-in for ease of use.

“The Fabric Footprint Impact Report empowers all participants across the supply chain in real-time and utilizes impact-analysis technology that requires no more than a smartphone to access,” Phil Derasmo, Co-Founder and CTO of Queen of Raw, said. “Removing any guesswork and keeping track of environmental and economic progress while accessing a trusted network, so companies can solve a very real problem in the face of climate change quickly, easily, and cost-effectively with no-code,” because everyone needs to understand the impact of their purchasing decisions.

SAP, Unilever Pilot Blockchain Technology Supporting Deforestation-Free Palm Oil

SAP and Unilever today announced a pilot of the GreenToken by SAP solution to further increase traceability and transparency in Unilever’s global palm oil supply chain.

The tech.mn Podcast: Making Manufacturing Connections With David Klein of Inspectorio

It’s safe to say that for most consumers, any thought of “manufacturing” lives and dies on whatever store shelf they decide to grab their shampoo from. But there’s a lot — LOT — more that goes into any good reaching that shelf in the first place. Unfortunately, the process is so complex that a lot of important data gets muddied thanks to the often outdated process used to track it. David Klein, Co-founder and President of Inspectorio, is out to change that.

Listen Here…

SAP.iO In Paris, Funding Announcement, Supply Chain Management

Innovative supply chain solution secures £5m in funding to expand in Europe

Flowlity, an innovative AI-based supply chain planning and forecasting solution, has secured £5 million in funding, led by Fortino Capital, to expand throughout Europe. The funding will be used to accelerate its development with the aim to becoming an industry leader by providing innovate ways of reducing waste across the entire supply chain – enabling companies to save money and reduce their carbon footprint.

Empower – Digitizing the journey from linear to circular econo

Wilhelm Myrer of Empower.eco talks about his blockchain tech to digitize the journey from linear to circular economies on Vinnie Mirchandani’s Analyst Cam blog.

The US EPA defines a circular economy as one which “reduces material use, redesigns materials to be less resource intensive, and recaptures “waste” as a resource to manufacture new materials and products.”

Analyst Cam: Specright – making standards and specifications sexy

Matthew Wright of Specright presents on the huge payback from precise specifications in products, formulas and packaging.

Specright was one of the startups in their Sustainability cohort last year but as you will hear precision in specifications can have an impact in every process which touches raw materials, ingredients, formulas, packaging and finished goods.

Matthew’s passion comes from a couple of decades in the packaging industry. As he describes in his book The Evolution of Products and Packaging, we have seen an explosion in SKUs and complexity in supply chains. As he says, existing ERP, PLM and other software were designed before complexity grew exponentially, and the lack of focus on specifications is the root cause of many supply chain issues we are seeing. BTW, Gartner identified them as a Cool Vendor in their Supply Chain category in 2020.

Saara Founder and CEO Sachin Garg Joins Forbes NEXT 1000

Saara Inc CEO and Founder Sachin Garg have joined Forbes NEXT 1000 fueled by nominations from worldwide and screened by top business leaders and entrepreneurs. The evaluation was made based on parameters such as revenue, business model, funding, impact the business creates, and story behind the start of the business.

“I would like to thank Forbes for acknowledging and supporting what we are trying to do here at Saara, especially with market-disrupting products like EcoReturns. It motivates us to push ourselves further towards making eCommerce more sustainable, both economically and ecologically,” Garg said.

He plans to leverage the listing to market the brand to a wider audience to help them gain profits and meet their sustainability goals, simultaneously staying connected to future partners and investors.

Analyst Cam: Algramo – Redefining CPG plastic packaging

Analyst Cam: Carlos Oliveira of Algramo presents on a different way to package and consume CPG products. Reduced plastic pollution, bite size economics, other benefits.

Algramo’s delivery mechanism is a vending machine dispenser where consumers refill in their reusable smart containers. Carlos says these containers can last up to 250 uses. RFID IDs in the containers and mobile apps help track consumption, container life and reuse patterns and also have a gamification angle. Carlos goes into some of the dispensing and sanitation technology.

The value propositions – Retailers save on shelf space. Producers like Unilever, Nestle, Colgate and Clorox are some of their customers who ship in bulk and save on packaging. Consumers pay for bite-size purchases at their point of need e,g, detergents are sold in public laundromats. The world benefits from reduced plastic pollution. Carlos presents on data on their plastic, water and C02 savings.