# Onboard new suppliers in days instead of months

> Chainyard and IBM run Trust Your Supplier, a Hyperledger Fabric network in which every supplier maintains a digital passport holding its credentials. Founding participants such as AB InBev, Cisco, GlaxoSmithKline, Lenovo, Nokia, Schneider Electric and Vodafone access it as permissioned buyers rather than re-verifying each supplier themselves. According to the Hyperledger Foundation, onboarding time fell from an average of 60 days to 3, and the cost of verifying and maintaining supplier information dropped by around 50 percent.

**Sector:** Tertiary sector · **Industry:** Management consulting · **Organisation:** Chainyard · **Maturity level:** Production

Canonical URL: https://www.sapientblock.com/en/use-cases/chainyard-neue-lieferanten-tagen-statt-monaten-freischalten

## Documentation status

- **Project status:** Production
- **Evidence:** Evidence medium
- **Editorial review:** pending

## Description

Chainyard and IBM operate Trust Your Supplier, a network where each supplier maintains their credentials in a digital passport and grants access to authorised buyers. Until now, each company has re-verified the same supplier for company data, certificates, insurance proofs, sanction lists, as well as sustainability and financial ratings, while the supplier fills out identical questionnaires for each customer. This shared register eliminates this duplication of work, and changes become immediately visible to all authorised buyers.

The network started in August 2019 with AB InBev, Cisco, GlaxoSmithKline, Lenovo, Nokia, Schneider Electric and Vodafone as founding participants. The technical foundation is Hyperledger Fabric, provided via the IBM Blockchain Platform, where a digital passport is maintained for each supplier as a unique, verifiable identity. Several independent verifiers are involved: Dun & Bradstreet confirms company data, EcoVadis assesses sustainability, and RapidRatings the financial risk, so the stored attributes are not based on self-disclosure. The supplier maintains their credentials once and decides which buyer may view them; an update is immediately valid for all authorised buyers. According to the Hyperledger Foundation, the average onboarding time dropped from 60 to 3 days, and verification and maintenance costs for supplier data fell by around 50% on the buyer side. This case shows that a widely repeated administrative process across the industry can largely be decoupled through a shared verification network.

## Benefits

- Significantly shortened time-to-contract with new suppliers.
- Better basis for statutory due diligence in the supply chain.
- According to the Hyperledger Foundation, onboarding time fell from an average of 60 to 3 days.
- Verification and maintenance costs for supplier data fell by around 50%.
- Independent verifiers confirm attributes so they are not based on self-disclosure.
- Changes are immediately visible to all authorised buyers.
- Elimination of repeated master data collection and questionnaire completion.
- More time for risk assessment and supplier development.

## Challenges

- Small suppliers need support to maintain their digital passport.
- The benefit depends on having enough buyers and suppliers represented in the network.
- Companies must decide how far they rely on confirmations from third-party verifiers.
- Integration with buyers' existing procurement systems involves integration effort.
- Compliance functions must adjust their audit depth to the verified attributes.

## Technology foundation

Trust Your Supplier runs on Hyperledger Fabric, deployed via the IBM Blockchain Platform, and maintains a digital passport for each supplier as a unique, verifiable identity. A distributed ledger is the appropriate foundation here because multiple competing buyers need to trust the same evidence without any one of them having master data control over the shared supplier base.

## Sources

- [ChainYard and IBM reduce new vendor risk & drastically cut onboarding from 60 to 3 days with Hyperledger Fabric](https://www.lfdecentralizedtrust.org/case-studies/chainyard-case-study)
- [IBM, Chainyard unveil blockchain-based 'Trust Your Supplier' network](https://www.computerworld.com/article/1656841/ibm-chainyard-unveil-blockchain-based-trust-your-supplier-network.html)
- [Chainyard and IBM Launch Trust Your Supplier Network](https://chainyard.com/insights/chainyard-and-ibm-launch-trust-your-supplier-network/)
- [Trust Your Supplier: a case study in faster, more secure vendor onboarding through blockchain](https://www.lfdecentralizedtrust.org/blog/2020/05/28/trust-your-supplier-a-case-study-in-faster-more-secure-vendor-onboarding-through-blockchain)