Our client is a Netherlands-based IT consulting company that sticks to a client-oriented business approach. Backed by substantial multi-year expertise in various domains and technologies, they provide high-end services such as architecting, designing, building and maintaining top-notch software solutions for trade finance, supply chains and commodities sectors.
The Brocoders team managed to build long-lasting partnerships with the founder of IT consulting company. We are genuinely happy to meet a partner that shares the same business mindset and strives to maintain and encourage a fruitful collaboration through regular mutual visits.
The situation
To exceed the ever-changing customers’ expectations, the Food & Beverage industry must focus on providing clear, transparent, yet secured data that clients can trust, report and act upon. It can be accomplished through a migration from legacy systems to new cutting-edge platforms.
That said, ON Consulting reached out to Brocoders back in 2018 to combine our teams and create a feature-rich solution that could reshape the F&B sector. The one that could deliver full transparency and traceability for every stakeholder across the entire supply chain. The one that could provide free, fast and easy access to public information for every interested party while ensuring all sensitive data is safe and sound.
Our client's core objective was to carry out the business tasks set before him by one of his key technical partners. Due to information disclosure agreement, this company will be named as N company further.
N company is one of the world's leading data-driven management companies with an incredible passion for assisting the F&B stakeholders along their journey through supply chains. For more than ten years, N company has been successfully providing its customers with highly accurate and timely info on the entire product life-cycle.
Driven by the "technological development is the key to success" principle, N company decided to move forward and launch a new project to deliver transparency and more insight into the orange juice chain.
To comply with the latest tech trends and meet the most challenging market requirements, N company required a solution enriched with the following ground-breaking features:
- A single all-in-one platform that combines every stakeholder, including producers, importers, distributors, processors and retailers.
- A solution that provides entirely transparent data on products from farm to fork for both controlling authorities (governmental bodies) and regular consumers.
- A multi-functioning product backed by a rock-solid security system that excludes any data breaches or hacker attacks.
- Public information is free to access while all the sensitive business and commercial data is securely stored within the platform.
- Real-time information is continuously updated, the production and supply processes are properly documented.
- Every product lot has a unique business number to enable remarkable traceability and transparency.
Working process
Project requirements elicitation
Based on a fruitful mutual collaboration with our client, business analysts and project managers from both the Brocoders and our client teams were involved in the project from the very beginning. To explore the market and review specification requirements, which could then be transformed into prototypes, they hold workshops with stakeholders and potential clients.
"The solution is still under development. Brocoders' work has met all requirements so far. The team leads an efficient workflow and provides excellent customer service."Founder of ON Consulting company
Our primary goal at this stage was the adoption of the right technology and a working environment that could fit our needs best while meeting our client’s expectations. In the end, we decided to opt for a Blockchain platform as of indispensable and innovative features, like fraud-free and transparent data transfers.
In fact, the Brocoders team had conducted in-depth research to find out which technology to use with Blockchain even before the Powerchain project was accepted. Based on the analyzed data we successfully gathered, Hyperledger Fabric ended up to be the best fit for us for ensuring corporate data security when working with the supply chain.
To date, Hyperledger Fabric is the most compelling open-source distributed ledger technology platform that provides organizations with versatile app development solutions built on a modular architecture. Unlike many other Blockchain-driven platforms initially intended for public network use only, Hyperledger Fabric at the outset is geared to create production-ready solutions for enterprises.
Its modular design ensures efficient industry-agnostic business app development that enjoys high flexibility and scalability while preserving data privacy and network security.
Here are some of the core features that companies can benefit from when using Hyperledger Fabric:
Technology screening
- Permission-based system for transactions and data access
- Adjustable set of modules including plug-in consensus protocols and custom-built smart contract models
- Low latency of confirmation procedure
- Ensuring data privacy via the user- and channel-based segmentation policies
- Support of various programming languages for smart contact building: Java, JavaScript, Golang, etc.
- High code quality (smart contract upgrades, versioning) through the robust CI/CD pipeline
- Easy procedure of reaching the agreement across organizations
- Compatibility and support of the Ethereum-like frameworks' constituents like Solidity and the EVM runtime environment
At the time of this writing, about two years have passed since we started working on this project. Nowadays, you can find a bunch of information on the Hyperledger Fabric platform, both official and from other sources.
However, there was no documentation at all when we were about to start studying this technology. The only information source we managed to find was some video tutorials, so we had to learn it the hard way — through trials and errors.
Product development
By applying the Hyperledger Fabric platform, we ended up with a "channel-like" structure that allowed for preserving the integrity and security of data. As a result, only the registered and approved organizations were able to access the data, as well as put their own data into the system.
In the beginning, we developed a core product for the orange juice supply chain only, but later we had to engage additional experts to cope with growing capacities due to the continuous project's expansion. In such a way, we adapted our orange-related core product to every upcoming channel:
Eggs
Bananas
Tilapia (Fish)
Our team
Blockchain backend developers
Front-end developers
Business analyst
Project manager
Our services
Technology
Key challenges
We can safely say that the entire project itself was a big challenge for our teams since we pioneered the use of a Hyperledger Fabric platform. There was no proper exhaustive documentation that we could resort to, so we had to stand on our own and create everything from scratch.
Just like any other top software producer, we had to face multiple field-specific problems both during the development stage or after the product launch. To find out more details about the issues we encountered, please check our blog.
Nevertheless, despite all the challenging tasks, we successfully walked this path thanks to a fruitful collaboration with our partner, ON Consulting. Through hard work, both the Brocoders and Ionita in-house specialists managed to acquire indispensable experience and sharpen their skills. Freshmen at the start, now we are true masters of the Blockchain-based sector.
Delivered solution
Driven by a disruptive idea to create a robust top-notch solution, ON Consulting and Brocoders delivered an innovative end-to-end platform empowered with Blockchain features.
At the moment, there are four active supply chain channels, and one more is to come soon:
Oranges
Eggs
Bananas
Tilapia (Fish)
Juices (upcoming)
Every channel has a custom-designed and adjusted Powerchain platform that combines various stakeholders, unique for each supply chain. However, there are five primary types of stakeholders for every channel:
To ensure data transparency throughout the entire supply chain, every supply chain partner must load a batch file that includes vital information (specific for each channel and partner), such as:
Each time a supply chain partner logs his batch into the system, he automatically signs an online contract, thus guaranteeing information actuality.
The SIM team received a powerful platform designed to support the F&B industry on its path. The solution effectively extracts the enormous potential of Blockchain-fueled technology to ensure outstanding traceability, unprecedented transparency and data security at the same time:
- An all-in-all platform for both stakeholders and final consumers to acquire full-fledged information on products.
- End-users can contact a producer, send him a photo of a product or rate him via a mobile app.
- Consumers can scan the QR-code on the package (orange juice channel) or insert a unique business code at a website, and check the entire journey that his product has taken.
Retailers provide remarkable transparency of the products, hence winning their customers’ trust and loyalty.
A client-oriented solution that minimizes the distance between farmers and consumers.
A life-changing product that ensures product quality, safety and good taste.
The results
The Powerchain has proved to be a state-of-the-art solution that is still evolving and expanding, so we continue to level up the product. The 5th channel for the strawberry supply chain is currently at the integration stage, while there is an alternative scheduled channel for another orange plantation.
The numbers tell the stories best there have been 1000 data requests over the past month, according to the server logs. Besides, several foreign media, along with the Netherlands local media, have written about our product.
