Building the Bridge: Integrating ERP with DLT Network

We’re all moving from a bilateral to a multilateral world: one where companies do business with many partners across the world simultaneously. DLT – especially Corda – is playing a growing role in enabling these expanding collaborative ecosystems. But how to build the bridge between the new DLT-powered ecosystems and companies’ legacy ERPs? At CordaCon 2020, this question was the focus of a compelling panel session featuring representatives from msg systems, SAP, TradeIX, and B3i.

The panellists provided various perspectives on the increasing integration between DLT networks and ERPs. SAP’s Robert Cummings explained: “We’re seeing that the business of tomorrow really takes place in ecosystems. That means five or six or even more companies, commonly from different industries, now work together to achieve a new type of business model. What that means is that you have to externalize – and, in the language of DLT, to tokenize – different transactions, and make them visible and interpretable by different systems and different players on the market.”

“DLT and blockchain technologies are going to be fundamental to the infrastructure that runs the world’s trade.” – Robert Cummings, Global Head of Financial Services Industries, SAP

A great example of this is TradeIX’s Corda-enabled trade finance solution, Marco Polo, which it developed jointly with R3 and a group of the world’s leading banks. Asked by msg’s Bernhard Lang what the next steps might be in their collaboration around DLT, TradeIX’s Robert Barnes said: “The way we see it, the great work that we’re doing with the integration with ERP is the first step. As you know, we’re in the process of working with msg’s teams to integrate insurance onto the network. msg is building the insurance app, if you like, which basically gives an on-ramp and off-ramp onto Marco Polo, and gives banks and corporates the ability to work with insurers to share information. “

This was just one of many exciting developments showcased by the panellists. To hear them all, click here to view the panel session in full.