TE-FOOD continues to implement and improve its blockchain based traceability solution

From time to time, we would like to inform our followers about the projects we are working on. While news announcements depend on several factors, we are still working continuously.

Integrating IOT devices in the traceability process

We believe that the next wave of adoption in traceability will require integrated and automated data collection from the farms to the processor. Smart machines, RF gates, beacons will provide information automatically, which will enable traceability solutions to provide lower operational expenses, enhanced trust in the data, and deeper understanding of the processes in the supply chain.

This is why we started cooperating with leading IOT brands like Honeywell and Bizerba. Their understanding of the customer needs, and positions on the market is an exceptional advantage to provide an enterprise grade solution in any country of the world. We expect that during the next 4–5 years, we will see several steps towards this direction on the market, and TE-FOOD will be well prepared to serve customers of any size.

Governmental traceability in Vietnam

Thanks to the efforts of Trung and his local team, there are several new development directions for the livestock management and traceability program.

As it is a governmental solution, compliance with various governmental institutions (e.g. Statistical Office) is an important requirement. We are working on adjustments to comply with the regulation changes.

We also made significant refactoring in the custom features of the applications used in Vietnam. Due to historical reasons, we had the traceability solution, the livestock management solution, and a third, hybrid solution for provices. Now, due to the changing needs, we are working on to bring these separate codebases into one solution with parameterizable feature sets, where a customer can potentially log in once, and access the features of all (currently) three solutions. This is a long-term development, where we integrate these solutions step by step.

Marketplace module

We also investigate new functional directions, which can bring new customers to the traceability program in Vietnam, or increase the engagement of our existing customer base.

Recently we launched a prototype of a marketplace module, which enables making direct trade deals between farmers and market agents. The purpose is to ease the way smallholder farmers and agents (working for wholesalers or retailers) can match according to their offers and needs. We are presenting the feature to many supply chain stakeholders to see how much added value they see in this possibility. We are also preparing pilot projects to find how we can improve the functionality of the marketplace module. The marketplace is not a standalone application, it provides access to those companies which are customers of TE-FOOD’s traceability and livestock management system in Vietnam.

Pilots are in preparation in other Vietnamese provinces

We are also working on small-scale pilots for traceability and livestock management in other Vietnamese provinces. We see the interest to improve control and to get insights, but we have to be aware that governmental projects develop slowly. Technical development is only a part of such projects. Alterations need to be made in the regulations, governmental proceses, compliance need to be built towards various regulations, government employees need to be trained to use and promote the system.

Blockchain based multi-partner loyalty rewards solution

Recently we published our intention to develop a loyalty rewards solution based on blockchain and tokenization. We have completed the planning phase of the feature set, and in the current phase, we are looking for partners which are interested in a pilot, so we can cooperate to work together on the solution.

Auchan continues the expansion

Auchan continues to integrate new products to its traceability system. The integration requires coordination with all the suppliers to collect and transmit data to the TrustChain, which makes the process slower, but our colleagues are supporting Auchan’s suppliers continuously.

Migros regularly deepens the functionality

The traceability system of Migros had been regularly extended during the last years with new functionalities to deepen the data collection of suppliers.

TE-FOOD Lite

Although during the last years, the Coronavirus pandemic made it very difficult to implement new solutions, we see a lot of future potential in an easy-to-implement, entry level traceability SaaS solution, like TE-FOOD Lite.

We are still partly refactoring the codebase to enable quicker implementations in the future. The less human resources the implementation requires, the more affordable the solution can be. This requires to analyze each implementation, and to develop features, which can be parameterized to cover as many use cases as possible.

We are currently working on some interesting use cases with TE-FOOD Lite. As soon as they are launched, or ready to communicate, we will publish information about them.

TE-FOOD is the world’s largest publicly accessible, farm-to-table food traceability solution. Started in 2016, it serves 6000+ business customers, and handles 400,000 business transactions each day.

Website: www.te-food.com