Blockchain’s compelling case in bringing trust, visibility into supply chain transactions

A blockchain network serves to eliminate such disputes, while also reducing massive physical paper documentation that translates into saved operational costs. “Savings can be looked at in other ways. For instance, in the diesel context, there are 3-6 cents per gallon of saved costs on our platform. Getting paid on time reduces the interest charge of financing your customer, who’s not paying fast enough and less administration, middleware and subscription software that needs to be paid from your pocket,” said Fox. 

To enable such transactions through the blockchain network, it is crucial for data that enters the system to be standardized across the value chain. Since it is not feasible to ask every stakeholder in the trucking supply chain to be compliant with data standards, Data Gumbo looks to bridge the gap by acting as a standardized aggregator. 

“We utilize standards where they’re available. But we map our data to a standard model within our system. In essence, we aren’t trying to get the industry to standardize but use our internal model to map data,” said Andrew Bruce, the CEO of Data Gumbo. “This relieves companies of the burden to standardize while getting on the network.”

Data Gumbo’s quest to create seamless trusted transactions centers around ensuring the data it uses is reliable and with little margin of error. Within the blockchain consortium, the margin of error is capped at 1.6% for transactions to remain automated between two parties, with a larger margin of error in transactions needing manual intervention before approval.

“This way, companies become highly interested in data. This is because there is a high incentive in making sure the data quality is high, and data is accurate,” said Bruce. 

Data Gumbo recently partnered with Texas Alliance of Energy Producers to deploy its interconnected blockchain network to its members, powering smart contracts that help stakeholders cut operational costs and increase efficiencies in commercial transactions. By ensuring a trusted environment for data sharing, Data Gumbo has enabled energy producers to capture the value and mitigate risk via better and informed decisions.