Focus on process & technology innovation

Just as we have discussed in our payments section, some of the traditional precepts of markets are being challenged. This is also true in the world of supply chain – the movement of goods from manufacture to consumer - where to date the physical aspects and financial aspects have been maintained largely in isolated parallel except at some key points for example where final delivery of goods could only be made on receipt of final irrevocable payment.

However, the flow of international trade could not have grown to the level it has if the two chains had to be linked in lock step – so mechanisms, often highly manual and paper based, were devised such as letters of credit, and paper invoices, to allow trade to flow. This may have facilitated growth to the current level, but it has introduced significant inefficiencies which are now becoming barriers to further growth. Innovations in process and technology have had some local or isolated success – e.g. electronic invoicing in a particular country or industry but they have yet to scale to the critical mass required to enable widespread international adoption. An approach to promote the wider adoption of these techniques is required.

The FasterCash Initiative

Our offering in this area concentrates on linking the physical and financial supply chains using a combination of innovative process and technology. Our major partner in this area is Intel with whom we have built a reference architecture and developed propositions around FasterCash involving utilization of new processes running on mobile technology.