The supply chain optimization and environmental impact space is extremely crowded, and new entrants are appearing all the time.

Not only is it hard for company’s like us to stand out, but it is also hard for companies to know who to trust and what to believe.

Every platform and product we have seen all deliver on the purpose they set out to achieve, but many are very focused on a single objective, such as transportation optimization, chain of custody control, or carbon accounting.

For companies to take a holistic view of their supply chain and migrate towards a more modern, agile and responsive model, they will need to use multiple platforms and products, which will result in a fragmented approach that is not optimal.

We have tried to take a more holistic view of the supply chain and how it operates, and have built a platform that is designed to be flexible and adaptable to the needs of our customers. We have also built a platform that is highly customizable with the underlying reference data that is used. Companies can inherit base reference data and amend accordingly, use an entirely different data set or override certain parameters as required. The idea behind Zero Pro is to provide the framework that companies are clearly missing that reduces operational cost and speeds up execution time.

We have also been very careful to ensure that we provide our users with the data in a way that is easy to understand and use in a way that is meaningful and educational, rather than as a set of answers to questions that they don’t understand. Every companies supply chain dynamics are different and one size doesn’t fit all here. We need to be a lot more open to supporting a better decisioning process rather than providing out of context recommendations.

Where Zero Pro excels the most is the certification and verification capabilities. If used correctly, they help to significantly increase the amount of trust, transparency and confidence in the decisions that are being made within the supply chain. This also allows companies to talk publically about the progress they are making in a much more robust and educational way. This is something that we do not seen in any of platform available today.

We also firmly believe that leveraging AI solutions as a way of avoiding the need to collect data from suppliers is not the right approach. AI solutions are only as good as the data they are trained on, and if that data is not accurate or complete, then the results will be misleading and potentially harmful. We believe that companies need to take a more proactive approach to collecting and managing their supply chain data, rather than relying on AI to do it for them.

We also have not seen a platform that is designed to engage the suppliers in the process in the way Zero Pro does. Most platforms rely on the buyer to do all of the work, which requires a higher level of resources and expertise than many companies have available. We have taken a much more collaborative design approach with Zero Pro which allows suppliers to take an active role in defining and managing their own supply chain data, which reduces the burden on the buyer and allows them to focus on more strategic activities. In turn the suppliers get access to powerful visualisations about their own business and can extend their relationship with Zero Pro independently to gain more insights into their own downward supply chains if they so wish.

We are not saying that Zero Pro is the only platform that can deliver on these objectives, but we are confident that it is the most comprehensive and flexible platform available today, and we are committed to continuously evolving it to meet the needs of our customers.