Blume Global Introduces New Digital Offerings for the Global Supply Chain Ecosystem

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• USA - English

LONDON, Sept. 24, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Gartner Supply Chain Executive Conference -- Blume Global, building on its more than two decades of delivering customer value through its REZ-1 platform, today announced new solutions to power a real-time, collaborative global supply chain ecosystem. With Blume solutions, all participants in the global supply chain ecosystem can leverage advanced technologies including Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to drive and accelerate visibility, orchestration, fulfillment and settlement across the supply chain – from retailers and manufacturers, to logistics service providers, to railroads and ocean carriers to motor carriers, to drive innovation and growth, create new value within and across their networks, and improve cost management and efficiencies.

"We are seeing a powerful convergence of trends that are simultaneously creating new opportunities and new challenges for businesses. Technological advances in machine learning, AI, intelligent robotic process automation, blockchain, big data, IoT and more, are enabling us to look at the supply chain and all the assets moving along the supply chain as a collaborative trading network that can be orchestrated and managed, and continuously improved, in real-time. At the same time, the foundational requirements around cost management, operational improvements, profit improvement and risk management remain core to supply chain leaders. Adding to this is the enormous competitive pressure that we are seeing across every industry that is on the one hand improving customer experience, and on the other simultaneously increasing pressure as demand becomes less predictable and transparent. This is driving a need for a more complete, collaborative, technology and data driven approach, from the first mile to the last mile, including the visibility, orchestration, fulfillment and settlement across all participants," said Pervinder Johar, Chief Executive Officer, Blume Global.

"As a customer since 2011, we are excited to see the next wave of innovation to come from Blume, in particular in logistics execution. For us, the ability to execute all aspects of logistics across our customers' supply chains is critical to our business, including first and last mile automation and standardization to bring efficiency and improved service; visibility and fulfillment through the vast network of Blume-connected motor carriers. We look forward to continuing our work with the new REZ-1, now Blume, going forward," said Mark Bartmann, Senior Director of Seafreight Drayage Solutions, Kuehne + Nagel.

According to Gartner, in its November 2017 report titled, "The Impact of the 'Network of Networks' on the Supply Chain and What Leaders Can Do About It," Gartner analysts noted the new possibilities for innovation with machine learning, saying, "As the network of networks brings formerly disparate sets of supply chain data together, new opportunities to apply machine learning are emerging. The combination of global trade management (GTM), TMS, and real-time tracking as an example can create a large dataset of end-to-end logistics. Machine learning can analyze the data and provide new insights into estimated arrival times, risk, and performance that wasn't feasible in stand-alone systems." Blume Digital Platform enables this network of networks to make best use of machine learning-driven automation and optimization.

In addition, Gartner published a report in August 2018, "Don't Believe the Control Tower Hype – Buyer Beware," noting, "These additional capabilities should include the consumption of extended digital signals (e.g., Internet of Things [IoT]) as well as the leveraging of planning capabilities at various levels of granularity and time horizons to continuously learn, generate insights and recommendations. Ideally, this would enable leveraging "cognitive intelligence" to sense demand and adjust supply in real time, supporting supply chain organizations in their journey reaching the upper echelon of supply chain maturity and supporting supply chain convergence." Blume solutions leverage IoT and other advanced technologies to automatically match demand and supply for assets, transportation legs and truck power.

The Blume solutions portfolio enables a real-time, digital supply chain ecosystem:

Blume Assets (REZ-1) enables carriers, service providers as well as any enterprise, such as retail customers that own assets, to manage their key assets, including containers, chassis, trailers and more, across the entire lifecycle.

• Accurate and dynamic asset tracking, inventory management and reservations
• Financial management, billing and settlement
• Maintenance and repair, including work order management and fleet management

Blume Logistics enables customers to successfully execute all aspects of logistics across the supply chain, including first- and last-mile visibility and fulfillment.

• Automates and standardizes real-time first- and last-mile updates to increase data visibility
• Connects LSPs to 100% of its global motor carrier network
• Improves visibility and control over transportation spend
• Enhances customer service and vendor relations

Blume Visibility delivers end-to-end visibility across inventory and shipments, including in-motion inventory.

• End-to-end shipment visibility at SKU level for buyers and shippers
• End-to-end visibility of inventory, including inventory in motion for accelerated decision making
• Multi-mode transport visibility: road, ocean, rail, air, barge
• Multi-mode connectivity for real time tracking: API, EDI, IoT, data streaming
• Dashboard and visualizations for arrival monitoring and exception alerting

Blume Optimization enables routing and asset utilization, reduces costs and enables agility in capacity planning.

• Machine learning-driven demand/supply matching for assets, transportation legs and truck power
• Street turn execution at a granular level
• In-transit inventory visualization
• Flowstack approach to container throughput for faster moves through terminals

Blume Finance enables transparency and visibility for freight audit and pay, automating transactions, verification and settlement.

• Smart contract repository
• Rating management and validation
• Machine learning-driven invoice and cost accrual auditing
• Blockchain-enabled payment and settlement

Blume Digital Platform is a modern, data-driven platform that connects trading partners in a neutral, collaborative supply chain ecosystem to drive value and growth. Beyond bringing efficiencies and automating repetitive tasks, Blume Digital Platform brings data from multiple sources to drive predictive capabilities in demand, real-time visibility into inventory, collaboration or co-innovation across trading partners, precision around availability or real-time status of orders, smart contracts, managing by exception—executed and enabled through our solutions to drive growth and value for customers.

The Blume Digital Platform leverages the latest advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine learning (ML), Natural Language Processing (NLP), blockchain, big data, intelligent robotic process automation and IoT to help customers digitize their supply chains and drive continuous innovation.

Blume Universe is an AI-powered, next-generation command center for real-time insights, automated exception management and predictive analytics to drive efficiencies through automation and deliver business value through predictive capabilities.

(*) Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

About Gartner Supply Chain Executive Conference 2018
Supply chains that embrace the transformative power of technology to drive agility and responsiveness can quickly anticipate and respond to unexpected events, and turn disruption to advantage. Gartner Supply Chain Executive Conference 2018 is designed to help supply chain leaders on this critical journey. https://www.gartner.com/en/conferences/emea/supply-chain-uk

About Blume Global
From the world's largest global retailers, manufacturers and consumer products companies to the smallest local drayage trucking companies, success depends on end-to-end visibility and orchestration across every move, every mode and every mile. At Blume Global, we are empowering this new digital era in the global supply chain ecosystem, with growth and innovation as the central focus, together with efficiency and cost reductions, to drive value creation. Building on our breakthrough technology for managing physical assets, our leading-edge platform keeps critical data moving through a network of networks, revealing insights, taking corrective action automatically, and precisely reconciling transactions. Blume Global is leading the supply chain ecosystem to a new era of orchestration, efficiency, customer satisfaction and growth. Learn more at blumeglobal.com.

MEDIA CONTACTS:

Katie Bromley
Communications Director
Blume Global
[email protected]

Laura Often
Account Manager
InkHouse
781-296-6485
[email protected]

SOURCE Blume Global

Related Links

https://www.blumeglobal.com