Hamburg. 15/03/2023. T-Systems and Commerzbank are developing a solution for fully automated supply chains with integrated financial services. The logistics company Nagel-Group is to implement the solution as a pilot customer prior to it being introduced to the market by the end of 2023. Urs Krämer, Chief Commercial Officer – Board Member at T-Systems, Dr Jörg Oliveri del Castillo-Schulz, Chief Operating Officer at Commerzbank, and Michael Lütjann, Chief Information Officer at Nagel-Group, presented the innovative approach at the Hamburg IT Strategy Days and discussed potential applications.
Nagel-Group is focussing on the use of IoT technology in invoicing in this pilot project. “The topic is quite a challenge to us as a logistics provider. It would be a revolutionary change if we could implement our idea of the SmartContract. All agreements are defined with all participants and documented on the blockchain. If all the triggers are met, everything is automated: from assigning the order to a subcontractor to paying the invoice,” says Michael Lütjann.
The Telekom subsidiary and Frankfurt bank make this possible using technologies such as 5G campus networks, cloud, artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things (IoT), sensor technology and blockchain/distributed ledger technologies (DLT). The joint solution aims to significantly reduce manual invoicing processes using event-based automation of payment flows along supply chains, and to form the basis for further networked financial services (for example, supply chain finance).
The automated finance solution supports manufacturers, suppliers and logistics companies in invoicing and financing their goods flows. The IoT sensors and the integration platform from T-Systems trigger orders and payments, which Commerzbank then executes fully automatically. Nagel-Group has clearly defined these triggers across its entire operations: from the receipt of goods in the warehouse management system to the final dispatch and delivery in the transport management system.
“We work widely with scanner technology and meticulously document every single process step. On top of this, our transport fleets are also equipped with IoT technology. This gives us the transparency needed and provides virtually every trigger point we need to automate financial processes,” explains Michael Lütjann.
There are also other systems such as the financial system, customer service or various applications with artificial intelligence. “Our datalake contains information that we correlate with each other. The more effectively we understand how to use these trigger points and extrapolate the results from them, the higher the quality of the services we can provide,” says Michael Lütjann.