That diminished visibility can create many challenges for unwitting companies, including being blamed for food fraud or just losing track of shipments. Food fraud alone is estimated to cost the global industry $30-40 billion every year. And it is widespread; recently, Interpol seized 2,500 tons of adulterated food in 47 countries.[i]

Supply chain visibility is not just important for tracking fraud—it’s also key to pinpointing tainted products. Bacteria can work its way into a package of peas without any intentional tampering. If an issue is discovered, by regulators or consumers, they need to be able to quickly isolate the problem to ensure consumer safety and minimise damage to their reputation. Without deep visibility into the supply chain, small mistakes can have significant costly and reputational consequences.

What if retailers and consumer goods manufacturers could make sure there were no holes in their supply chain and provide transparency into how that food had been treated during transportation and storage?

As digital techniques mature, their different use cases broaden. Blockchain is a technology that has already been present in the financial services industry for some time, and increasingly there is interest to deploy it for transparency reasons when it comes to food.

Blockchains are digitally-recorded ledgers stored in transaction groups called blocks, which are then distributed and stored across a network of computers and servers. As transactions are made, they are consolidated into a new “block” containing data that builds upon the previous block and stored in a chain, hence the name “blockchain.”

This creates a linear record of entry that has complete integrity—each block is secure and the incorporated data is preserved immutably across multiple ledgers.

Blockchain technology empowers businesses to maintain transparent, secure record keeping, track the provenance of goods, and provide a method to engage in secure transactions.[ii] For retailers and consumer goods companies, these capabilities can mean the difference between a widespread recall and pulling a few tainted packages, or even precluding issues in the first place.[iii] With blockchain, companies can use smart contracts to make and verify transactions in near real time—streamlining business processes and saving money.

Let’s look at how blockchain is transforming retail and consumer goods supply chains.

Micro-level goods tracking and efficiency

Many of today’s supply chains span countless stages and many geographic locations, making it hard to track goods or trace the origin of incidents.[iv] Blockchain dramatically enhances transparency, enabling all parties to trace a product’s journey along the supply chain.[v] If a restaurant or a grocer can quickly identify all parties involved in the supply of sensitive or high-value categories, they could potentially save significant amounts of time and money with dates, locations of inspection, and inspection results all visible in the distributed ledger.

Wal-Mart is trialing blockchain to address this exact problem.[vi] By tracking the provenance and supply chain journey of individual packages of produce and pork, they aim to pinpoint and prevent outbreaks of illness. A blockchain database enables Wal-Mart to acquire vast amounts of supply chain data that the company can use to deliver food to stores more efficiently, reduce spoilage and waste, and cut costs.[vii]

Streamline the supply chain with smart contracts

Smart contracts are one of the most revolutionary aspects of blockchain. Instead of being drawn up on paper, contracts between parties are written as code into the blockchain and recorded into a ledger. These contracts are incredibly difficult to tamper with thanks to the cryptography-based transactions of blockchain. The contracts are then executed according to pre-determined triggering events, such as transferring funds the moment a shipment arrives at the store.[viii]

At the National Retail Federation (NRF) convention in January, Mojix introduced a supply chain management tool that uses blockchain-based smart contracts. Mojix uses RFID hardware to carefully track the delivery of goods, ensuring reliability and providing data on reducing overhead for retailers. Then, Mojix combines that data with smart contracts based on Microsoft’s Azure Blockchain-as-a-service platform.

Scot Stelter, Mojix’s vice president of product marketing, explains how a smart contract can specify an exact product flow along the supply chain. “At each step of the way, that’s a smart contract, where effectively a box gets checked, cryptographically locked and published to the blockchain,” he said. “When I am at the end of the chain, I can track the provenance of berries so when they arrive I know if they are fresh. All parties to a contract have to agree that all the boxes are checkable…”[ix]

Implementing blockchain

The potential for blockchain to revolutionize retail supply chain efficiency is clear. Microsoft supports the rapid, low-cost, low-risk, and fast-fail platforms that enable developers to experiment with a growing number of distributed ledger technologies. The recently launched Blockchain-as-a-Service (BaaS), built on Microsoft Azure, helps organisations like Mojix develop, test and deploy blockchain applications using Azure DevTest labs. With Microsoft, developers are experimenting with retail processes and applications on a flexible, scalable and trusted cloud platform.

Get started today

Learn more about the decentralised applications already being built with blockchain here. Start a free trial of Azure and start building your idea today.

LinkedIn: Nina Lund

Twitter: @lund_nina

[i] http://time.com/4412535/food-fraud-olive-oil/

[ii] http://www.wired.co.uk/article/jessi-baker-wired-retail-2015

[iii] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-18/wal-mart-tackles-food-safety-with-test-of-blockchain-technology

[iv] https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/24/blockchain-has-the-potential-to-revolutionize-the-supply-chain/

[v] https://www.accenture.com/us-en/insight-highlights-cgs-blockchain-cpg-and-retail-industries

[vi] https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/24/blockchain-has-the-potential-to-revolutionize-the-supply-chain/

[vii] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-18/wal-mart-tackles-food-safety-with-test-of-blockchain-technology

[viii] http://blockgeeks.com/guides/smart-contracts/

[ix] https://redmondmag.com/blogs/the-schwartz-report/2017/01/microsoft-pitches-blockchain-to-retailers.aspx

The post How blockchain can transform the consumer goods supply chain appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

Automate and Optimise Route Planning

A lot of work goes into identifying which points of sale must be visited, with what frequency and what has to be done there. Imagine being empowered by software that considers multiple factors beyond geography to automatically predict the best time to visit a particular shop and improve overall routing efficiency. If a shop usually has a slump every July, recently hired a new manager or has a new promotion coming up the software will adjust routing accordingly to optimise employee time. Machine Learning technology also generates tailored to-do lists for shop visits that are based on what a particular shop needs. So, before the account rep gets to the shop they will be made aware of issues like faulty equipment and they won’t have to spend time determining which tasks are required. Once reps arrive on site, the software can also help them to streamline their audit activities.

Enable the ‘Perfect’ Shop Visit

When the account reps are conducting a shop audit, imagine having technology that helps them to be more efficient with their time. Not only would they be able to avoid pen and paper – which 64% of retail execution professionals still use[1] – but they could skip digital data entry by using digital image recognition and speech-to-text functionality. Digital image recognition allows reps to take pictures of product displays in the shop instead of recording inspection results manually. From an image, a model can evaluate out-of-stocks, facings, prices, share of shelf and planogram compliance. Where a human operator would have to visually assess each detail to find errant product placement, the software finds errors and inconsistencies in seconds. Machine Learning also enables reps to verbally dictate notes, commands and order placements to a wearable device such as a smart watch or headset. The system isolates key words from the dictation, which will trigger actions in the Retail Execution software. Digitally-captured data saves retail execution professionals time and avoids the mistakes inherent to manual data collection. Data from the visits is disseminated in real time, so that managers receive audit results immediately instead of months after completion.

Deepen data analysis

Once the data has been collected, the final benefit of applying Machine Learning in retail execution is to find patterns in data that can help predict the best step to take next. CPG companies are dealing with enormous volumes of data on sales, shop inventories, deliveries and promotions at thousands of retail outlets. Using spreadsheets for tracking and analysis is time-consuming and spreadsheets can only do what you tell them to do. But Machine Learning automatically identifies common patterns and trends that would normally be difficult to uncover. For example, a ML solution can analyse data to predict the exact impact of a promotion in a major shop chain or determine the ROI of a loyalty programme at a certain shop. Understanding data at a granular level makes it easier to measure product performance, recognise issues and scale best practices across the board.

Microsoft Machine Learning

Machine Learning can significantly help route field employees more efficiently, automate repetitive manual processes and improve data analysis and insights across the organisation. Ultimately, these benefits help you keep up with the growth of your product market and make better decisions about promotions, campaigns and investments. Microsoft and its partners will continue to drive ongoing investments in Machine Learning and retail execution to help better position CPG companies for an increasingly digital age. To learn more about current in-market solutions for retail execution, take a look at AFS POP Retail Execution and AFS Retail Execution on AppSource today. [1]EKN Outlook, 2016

The post Machine Learning + Retail Execution = Supercharged shop visits and data analysis appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.