Finland-headed Finland-headed oil refiner and renewable fuels producer Neste has chosen Nortal AS, an Estonia-headed international ICT company to develop a demo version of a sustainability portal for raw material suppliers. The objective of the collaboration is to develop a demo version of Neste's digital platform called Supplier Sustainability Portal. This demo will allow Neste's feedstock suppliers to get a sense of the key elements of the system.
According to Neste, the companies aim to have the first raw material suppliers to test the demo version in mid-November 2017. The demo version will enable them to experiment with several functions, such as building their own supplier profile, submitting sustainability and raw material delivery data, and adding supply chain data from raw material suppliers with the aid of a map service.
It is also hoped that suppliers will provide feedback on how the system should be further developed, and details of what kinds of features or changes would make their work easier, or create an added value of some other kind.
A direct “Hackathon” continuation
Co-operation with Nortal is a natural continuation of the Hackathon that Neste held in spring 2017. In this event, ten teams from around the world generated ideas for developing and digitizing Neste’s sustainability system for its suppliers.
The Hackathon was won by Team Fute, and its members were Thanh Dao, Yuexin Du and Khanh Nguyen. The concept presented by Team Nortal, now selected as an affiliate, received an honourable mention at the Hackathon.
Neste is exceptional among hackathon organizers in that it has continued active system development based on the ideas presented in the event, specifically with one of the participating teams,” said Nortal’s Project Manager Juha Virko, who participated in Neste’s hackathon.
Virko points out that most businesses often emphasize the positive visibility given by hackathons and the gathering of new ideas.
After evaluating the ideas of all the hackathon finalists, we decided to partner up with Nortal. They had just the right kind of special expertise to supplement Neste’s own resources, said Tommi Tuovila, CIO of Neste.
First-of-a-kind for biofuels sector
The sustainability portal for Neste’s raw material suppliers is one of the first of its kind in the biofuels sector. It is a new kind of digital platform for the approval and induction processes of new raw material suppliers and supports continuous collaboration and communication among Neste, it’s raw material suppliers and other stakeholders.
It also ties sustainability even tighter to operational activities. The portal is tailored to Neste’s continually growing renewable products business. It supports the collection, production and crystallization of data, especially within the supply chain, and in future for external stakeholders as well. Neste’s goal is to take the portal into use by the end of 2018.
With this digital system and the data that it enables us to collect and present, we aim to make Neste a clear forerunner in supply chain sustainability and transparency. We also hope to inspire others to follow us on the same path, surmised Eveliina Vikström Neste’s Sustainability Specialist who manages the portal development project.
