Posted by Tokyo, Japan – Singapore: NTT DATA and SAP Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) announced a new co-innovation solution to improve supply chain insurance management. The solution, Connected Product, is a packaged offering jointly developed by NTT DATA and SAP SE, furthering the strategic alliance formed in 2020 between parent company NTT and SAP SE.
Global value chains are becoming increasingly complex due to rising geopolitical risk, trade growth, and volatility of material availability. Losses due to poor transportation conditions have become a multibillion-dollar problem due to extreme difficulty in identifying the cause of damage or when an incident occurred.
The Connected Product solution responds to this need by monitoring the location and environmental conditions of goods in transit. It is especially useful for tracking fragile goods, such as solar panels; bulk liquids, such as wine and olive oil; and sensitive cold chain shipments, such as cheese, pharmaceuticals, and even vaccines.
The tracking provides greater visibility across the entire supply chain, and agility to activate immediate reactionary procedures, in case of damage or delays. This reduces friction when purchasing insurance and processing claims for shipments, and ensures timely delivery of goods. It also reduces waste and promotes sustainability.
Connected Product brings together the power of SAP Business Network for Logistics and the global track and trace option, extended with NTT DATA smart insurance policy management assets, to dramatically change the way people ship goods and manage associated risks.
It also includes components built using SAP Business Technology Platform. By enabling end-to-end, real-time monitoring of the transportation conditions, the solution can monitor all variables that could affect a shipment, and automatically trigger and execute insurance policies if goods are not transported under certain pre-defined conditions.
Utilising SAP Business Network for Logistics helps improve accountability for each stakeholder and makes transport insurance management easier. Plus, by digitising shipment and insurance documentation, the solution simplifies tracking and insurance processes across the supply chain, reducing waste and costs, and benefiting the whole ecosystem – from the insurance company to the insurance reseller to the logistics companies.
“What we’re announcing today improves supply chain visibility for logistics companies and insurers here in the APJ region, and delivers on NTT and SAP’s shared vision of helping companies around the globe achieve greater resiliency and agility to ensure they are prepared for future disruptions,” said Paul Marriott, President, SAP APJ.
“Today, more than ever before, global logistics need to be resilient and adaptative. Long-term planning alone is no longer sufficient, and organisations must be able to react quickly especially in times of uncertainty. Critical to enabling this type of agility is to have the right data in the right hands, in real time,” said Norbert Rotter, SVP, NTT DATA Corporation, and CEO, NTT DATA Business Solutions.