IBM, Armonk, N.Y., and Chainyard, Morrisville, N.C., announced Trust Your Supplier, a new blockchain network designed to improve supplier qualification, validation, onboarding and life cycle information management.

By using a decentralized approach and an audit trail built on blockchain, Trust Your Supplier is designed to eliminate manual processes and help reduce the risk of fraud and errors.

Trust Your Supplier creates a digital passport for supplier identity on the blockchain network that allows suppliers to share information with any permissioned buyer on the network. Blockchain ensures a permissioned-based data sharing network. This should help reduce the time associated with qualifying, validating and managing new suppliers while creating new business opportunities among suppliers and buyers. Third-party validators provide outside verification or audit capabilities directly on the network.

The Trust Your Supplier blockchain network can also connect existing procurement business networks by relaying necessary supplier data required for exchanging purchase orders and invoices, without the need for suppliers to enter it in multiple different networks and automating onboarding process to those networks.