On 6th March, the official website of Vodafone released a blog on its new industry-wide initiative undertaken to improve diversity and representation within the tech sector.
Vodafone will be “exploring” the utility of a blockchain as a part of their new process to promote and verify diverse suppliers through Trust Your Supplier. Trust your supplier is a blockchain network working on a digital identity platform that provides a trustworthy source of information. It simplifies and accelerates supplier onboarding and lifecycle management.
Trust Your Supplier is built under the partnership of IBM and ChainYard [blockchain company] with Vodafone, Cisco, Nokia, Lenovo, and more as its founding members.
“Working with IBM and Chainyard on this blockchain initiative represents a great opportunity for Nokia to further enhance our suppliers’ experience and optimize the onboarding process. Using the latest technology to address a classical challenge will be of benefit for everyone, and further increase the speed of using innovative solutions.” – Sangay Mehta, the Vice President at Nokia Procurement
Vodafone Group is one of the world’s driving telecoms and innovation specialist co-ops. The company’s expertise lies in connectivity, convergence and the Internet of Things. In unison with Trust Your Supplier, Vodafone is not only adopting a nascent technology influencing other industries but also is enabling partnerships between emerging technologies and telecom giants.
Creating an inclusive digital future
Ahead of International Women’s Day, Vodafone announced #ChangeTheFace – an industry-wide initiative “calling on technology leaders to join and make a pledge to increase diversity and equality in the sector.” Vodafone has committed to expanding its work with “#ChangeTheFace” to ensure that the technology industry represents society.
Vodafone is focused on turning into the world’s best company for women by 2025, helping a large number of women to progress in their careers. The company aims to connect 50 million ladies in developing markets by 2025.
That said, companies such as Ericsson and Nokia are among first to join Vodafone in the pledge to ‘change the face’ of technology. Additionally, Vodafone has announced its global strategy to “increase women’s access to careers in the technology industry through its Future Jobs Finder tool”. Not just this, the giant will also be working with WEConnect International, to boost diversity and inclusion in its supply chain.
This is not the first time Vodafone has stepped forward to be a part of the crypto/blockchain space. Recently, it was noticed that Vodafone was running ads related to Bitcoin on Facebook in Germany.
After Facebook’s Libra coin controversy, companies like PayPal, Visa, Mastercard left the association. With that, even telecom giant Vodafone exited its partnership, nevertheless, the telecom giant has still promoted and supported the nascent decentralized technology. And by the looks of it, plans to keep this going.