automation Archives • SAP.iO

How GrainChain Is Leveling the Playing Field

GrainChain has been nominated in HackerNoon’s annual Startup of the Year awards in McAllen, Texas, USA.

Meet GrainChain

GrainChain is working to level the playing field for producers and all other participants along the global agricultural supply chain by directly addressing current pain points such as reliability of data, traceability, the speed of payments, and access to financing and insurance.

My Role

I am Tom DeRosa, Director of Marketing for GrainChain. I have the privilege of crafting GrainChain’s story and sharing it with the world, from what we do to how we do it and the impact we are making across the global agricultural supply chain.

I’m excited about our most recent campaign: interviews with the producers, lenders, and other supply chain participants that we work with. There are real people and real world success stories behind our impressive technological innovations.

How We’re Disrupting/Improving the Agricultural Industry

We’re bringing the technological tools that large-scale producers use and making them available to small to medium-sized producers.

GrainChain is working to take an industry that is still relying on paper and labor-intensive practices and move it toward a productive, sustainable future, helping producers, buyers, storage operators, lenders, and other supply chain participants around the world.

Our software ecosystem solves problems for all participants at every stage of the supply chain, providing better visibility, efficiency, and data. We are not merely aggregating data but generating it, and the reliability of this data allows us to open up new opportunities in the marketplace.

Standing Out from The Crowd

We are unique because we are not creating solutions in search of a problem.

We’re not building blockchain and IoT-driven solutions because that technology is popular and draws attention–we are constantly seeking out the best technology and approaches available to solve real-world problems faced along the agricultural supply chain.

More importantly, we are applying these technologies the right way.

Each solution we have built solves a specific problem that producers, buyers, lenders, storage operators, and other supply chain participants are facing in markets around the world.

We believe no one is really tackling supply chain efficiency, traceability, and liquidity in the holistic way we are, connecting all participants through a single point of truth.

Our Predictions/Thoughts on the Agricultural Industry in 2023

Automation and digitization of processes at each stage of the supply chain will continue to ramp up in 2023, meaning more reliable, real-time data can be captured, stored, and made available to all stakeholders.

This data is key to lowering risk and providing producers with more and better financial options from loans to insurance.

AI is going to be transformative in this industry as it is across all industries. AI can help supply chain participants identify anomalous data and solve problems more quickly.

It can enhance predictive analytics and forecasting so that producers can make their operations more efficient and get better prices in a highly volatile marketplace.

As with many industries, there will be a shift away from proprietary hardware and heavy investments in infrastructure toward cloud computing and mobile apps that allow producers, storage operators, and logistics providers to more quickly and easily integrate technology into their operations.

We’re in an age of amazing advancements in technology, but the key is applying the right technologies in the right way to truly impact the agricultural supply chain.

The SAP Store Now Offers yellow.ai’s Generative AI-powered ChatBots and VoiceBots for Employee and Customer Experience

Yellow.ai, a global leader in Conversational AI announced that its generative AI-powered ChatBots and VoiceBots solution for customer and employee experience automation are now available on SAP Store, the digital marketplace for SAP and partner offerings. Both solutions are built on SAP Business Technology Platform using SAP Integration Suite. While the customer experience (CX) solution integrates with SAP Commerce, SAP Commerce Cloud, SAP CRM Sales, and SAP CRM Service Manager, the employee experience (EX) solution integrates with SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central.

“Leveraging multi-LLM architecture, our generative AI-powered Dynamic Automation Platform is helping enterprises redefine how they connect with both customers and employees, giving them a competitive advantage and valuable ROI at scale,” said Raghu Ravinutala, CEO & Co-founder, Yellow.ai.

Available on SAP Store for a free trial.

How To De-Risk Supply Chains In An Unpredictable World

Supply chain collaboration is one of those every day business terms that’s easy to dismiss until a catastrophic disruption strikes like material shortages, product design flaws, production delays, and more. But what if organizations across the supply chain could quickly huddle to pinpoint problems and take action together, staving off anything from minor setbacks to potential disaster? This is the concept behind Inspectorio, a cloud-based solution designed to help suppliers, manufacturers, brands, and retailers work together to reduce supply chain risk through digitalized quality management, ESG compliance, production tracking, and lab testing.

“Automating activities on a centralized data platform helps companies make fast and strategic adjustments in a way that is incredibly collaborative with their supplier base,” said David Klein, president and co-founder of Inspectorio. “Organizations can become more agile and resilient to supply chain disruptions, able to shift sources, product materials, and production locations to address problems and improve productivity and efficiencies.”

After digitalizing manual activities on Inspectorio, Klein said that organizations have averaged 95% time savings in administrative data entry, and 100% time savings in reporting. Customers have improved quality pass rates by approximately 8% on average. Some have reduced defect rates by 14% on average.

Digitizing quality control for accuracy and efficiency

Quality management spans numerous groups, including factories that conduct self-inspections and third-party inspectors who visit facilities. According to Klein, digitizing quality management activities helps suppliers, retailers, and others work together on standardized quality control. Inspectorio incorporates artificial intelligence to monitor facility risk, leading to valuable business insights and cost-savings.

“With data integrity, you can better understand your supplier base and benchmark their performance,” said Klein. “When you designate factories and products by risk factor, you can adapt quality controls appropriately. For example, maybe lower-risk factories can manage self-inspections on their own. High-risk factories producing high-risk products require tighter controls. Over time, you’re able to maximize your resources and lower costs while increasing quality outcomes.”

Yellow.ai tackles conversational AI pain points with new design tool

An industry-wide shift to greater use of conversational AI, often in the form of chatbots and voice assistants, is clearly underway. However, the success of these interactions depends on the quality of conversation design, a new domain for most developers and one that may hinge on subpar or outdated tooling. This is the challenge San Mateo, CA-based Yellow.ai seeks to address with its conversational AI platform.

Yellow.ai suggests that problems in this burgeoning area often reside in the design process itself. Though design is a crucial step in developing conversational AI, the process is often hindered by the use of flowchart-based tools that result in clunky and complicated designs. This not only slows development, it creates a disjointed experience for users, who encounter inconsistent design choices and interactions across different conversational interfaces.

One of the key pain points in conversation design is in the basic approach. Most designers are relying on flowchart-based tools that are not optimized for designing conversations. This makes the design process time-consuming and cumbersome, leading to subpar outcomes. As well, replicating design flows in development is a tedious and inefficient process.

With the launch of its Dynamic Conversation Designer, Yellow.AI looks to improve the design process for chat and voice conversational workflows using generative AI. Integrated within the Yellow.ai conversational AI platform, this conversation design tool allows teams to design chatbot conversations without writing any code, saving significant development time and effort.

The Dynamic Conversation Designer creates development flows automatically from design flows, eliminating the need for developers to start from scratch. Moreover, there is instant auto-sync between design and development flows. With this, the company claims to deliver a 50% faster time to market, along with reduced development and training time.

German Robotics Pioneer Wandelbots Expands No-Code Solution to U.S.

Wandelbots, the German-based no-code robotics software firm, recently opened a U.S. headquarters in Chicago to expand its global operations and accelerate human-centered robotics solutions in the manufacturing industry. Its signature software, Wandelbots Teaching, works the same with any robot, allowing users to control various models with no prior programming knowledge.

As the industrial robotics market continues to grow, developers and end users need an easy-to-use platform for robotic automation. The Wandelbots’ no-code solution is built to provide users of all competencies the ability to program a robot for maximum efficiency and automation.

“Our product is tailor-made for the U.S. market, which is ideal as a prerequisite for successful expansion,” said Christian Piechnick, Wandelbots founder and CEO. “The labor shortage in the United States is severe right now and is getting worse. Wandelbots can help to face this challenge and support U.S. companies on their way towards automation and digitization of manufacturing processes.”