Introducing TrackX Keychain™: Empowering Enterprises to Run More Efficient and Sustainable Supply Chains

Supply chains are changing dramatically, and the pace is accelerating. They must produce faster, with higher quality, and be more resilient, all while lowering costs. To help companies succeed, we are launching TrackX Keychain™ the next generation in tracing, tracking and collaboration solutions designed to help companies drive supply chain efficiency and sustainability.

This post will introduce you to Keychain. We will discuss four major trends that are pressuring today’s supply chain and how market leaders are responding. We will also provide five core areas on which to focus first for immediate impact.

Today’s Supply Chain Environment

The pandemic has exposed four forces driving supply chain operational change. These are summarized in Exhibit 1.

Exhibit 1: Four Forces Impacting Today’s Supply Chains

• Consumers are demanding greater transparency around product origin, chain of custody, product contents, and manufacturing processes. In short, they want sustainable products. Manufacturers must ensure they are collecting and presenting accurate data to consumers, retailers, and other stakeholders.
• Accenture reports that 96% of US companies are engaged in increased Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) regulatory reporting and compliance mandates. Supply chains must ready themselves for greater demands for supply chain data that is already difficult or costly to collect.
• Supply chain collaboration is critical. Highly collaborative companies outperform their peers 2:1, yet McKinsey found that over 54% of companies have no visibility at all into their supply chain partners’ operations.  Collaboration means greater transparency and trust not only with direct partners, but with all other participants in the supply chain network.
• If the COVID-19 taught us anything, it is that Resilience – Rapid response to disruptions – is all the more critical. McKinsey projects that manufacturers can expect a major, 2+ month supply chain disruption every 3.5 years. Companies must adapt by accelerating investments in technology solutions so they can more rapidly innovate, adapt and respond.

The New Networked Supply Chain

Motivated by these changes, old-style, linear supply chains are evolving into more modern Networked Supply Chains. Networked Supply Chains depend on greater collaboration, communication, and data transparency as described in Exhibit 2.

Exhibit 2: The TrackX Networked Supply Chains v Traditional Supply Chains

This change may seem daunting. It can be a multi-year investment in time and investment to realize the full potential, and it is highly dependent on equal effort from your suppliers and customers. However, you can lay the right foundation now.  Here is where to start.

Enabling Networked Supply Chains with the “5-C’s”

Based on our work with dozens of manufacturers across multiple industries, we have found that the most successful transformations start with the 5C’s:

1. Respond to Consumer Demand for sustainable products.  Consumers want proof of origin, chain of custody and authenticity. Non-transparent, and non-sustainable brands underperform peers by 6% (McKinsey). Enhanced transparency will put a whole new set of demands on the supply chain.
2. Compliance Reporting for regulatory mandates and sustainability claims.   Supply chains must collect data, audit operations and report on activities for everything from new SEC reporting requirements to increasing government regulations. Automation and verification are critical to keeping down costs.
3. Collaboration across the entire supply chain ecosystem. As noted above, collaboration increases resiliency and responsiveness.
4. Most companies are awash in data, collected and housed in various systems.  Control tower analytics, or a centralized analytic platform that aggregates supply chain data in one place will give managers much greater control over operations.
5. Comprehensive Visibility throughout the Supply Chain Network comes when partner data is verifiable, secure, and complete.  You will get the most out of control tower analytics when all parties are working off a shared system of record.

Leaders must invest in enabling technologies that allow them to digitize their supply chain, automate data collection, verification and analyses, and that facilitate easy active collaboration with their ecosystem partners.

Introducing TrackX 2.0

Today we are launching TrackX 2.0.  Our mission is to be the premier provider of enterprise tracing, tracking and collaboration solutions that customers trust as the foundation of their sustainable, resilient and efficient supply chains.

Over the past 10 years, TrackX has built its reputation as the leader in supply chain asset management solutions, using IoT, RFID, mobile and other technologies. Over time we have added new capabilities, such as predictive analytics, machine learning and blockchain integration.

In the coming months, TrackX will be expanding our current platform capabilities with purpose-built solutions, including:

• TrackX Control Tower, a business intelligence platform that will help customers become more responsive and resilient to disruption. Control Tower is a web platform that aggregates and analyzes supply chain data across the enterprise and beyond. By trusting TrackX with their critical data, customers can reach a whole new level of business process automation with greater responsiveness, flexibility, and adaptability.
• TrackX Verify, a data distribution and analytics hub that allows customers to safely and securely share data across their partner ecosystem. Customers can achieve high transparency, trust and partner collaboration.
• TrackX ESG, a unique solution that streamlines the typically resource-intensive task of collecting, analyzing and reporting ESG progress to regulators, customers, consumers and investors. Customers will be able to report more completely and accurately, at a fraction of the time and cost.

All of these capabilities will be based on Keychain, our highly configurable, scalable, partner friendly cloud-based platform.  We bring together the hardware, software and services to deliver the next era of supply chain visibility, transparency and trust .

Conclusion

TrackX has helped dozens of leading companies successfully digitize their supply chains. We will continue our laser-like focus on delivering highly configurable, scalable, partner friendly cloud-based solutions that improve clients’ supply chain processes and grow their business.  We are growing our capabilities, so we are prepared to help companies adopt the technologies and process automation necessary to efficiently, flexibly respond to supply chain disruptions.  Finally, we will enable clients to proactively meet increased consumer demand for transparency around product quality, origin, sustainable and other ESG practices.

About TrackX

TrackX, Inc. (TSX.V: TKX), based in Denver, Colorado, is the SaaS-based enterprise tracing, tracking & collaboration solution that leading brands trust to achieve more sustainable and better performing supply chains. TrackX solutions are built on an enterprise scalable and fully customizable platform that leverages a broad array of RFID, IoT (Internet of Things) and Sensor Technologies to provide item level visibility to customers across a broad array of industries, including food, beverage, brewery, automotive, retail, financial services, technology and government. For more information, visit the new www.trackx.com.