The paradigm
Procurement is a market built on closed platforms. Concert exists to open it.
Today's procurement platforms extract rent from both buyers and suppliers, silo commercial data behind proprietary walls, resist interoperability, and fail to leverage the intelligent agent capabilities transforming every other domain.
Concert stewards an alternative: the GUILD paradigm — Governed, Unified, Intelligent, Linked, Decentralised networks where human and synthetic agents operate under shared governance with decentralised data sovereignty and cryptographic trust.
Our story
The guild, reinvented
Medieval guilds were one of history's most successful governance innovations. They set entry criteria for practitioners, governed quality standards, protected members' commercial interests, managed dispute resolution, and operated as self-governing networks of trusted parties within broader markets. A guild member in Florence could present their credentials in Bruges and be recognised immediately.
Concert revives these principles with modern infrastructure. Where medieval guilds governed through bylaws and inspections, Concert governs through policy-as-code and cryptographic verification. Where physical guild halls served as trusted meeting points, SIGNET networks provide secure, governed digital environments. Where guild marks authenticated quality, verifiable credentials authenticate capability.
The name Concert carries its own resonance: a concert is an action undertaken in collaboration, by arrangement, together. Concert Foundation convenes standards bodies, technology platforms, buying organisations, suppliers, and researchers needed to build procurement infrastructure that serves participants rather than extracting from them.
The GUILD principles
Five properties defining every SIGNET network
Rules as code. Policy engines. AI Board oversight. Full audit trails.
PEPPOL. UBL. OCDS. W3C. Open standards as common language.
AI agents alongside humans. MCP and A2A protocols. Model-agnostic.
Solid Pods. Consent-based sharing. Data stays with participants.
DIDs. Verifiable Credentials. No central warehouse. No lock-in.
The harness layer
Agent = Model + Harness. SIGNET is the procurement harness.
Models are becoming interchangeable. The real leverage lies with whoever builds the execution layer that every model runs through — the runtime, tooling, memory, policy, sandboxing, and verification that transform raw intelligence into production work.
SIGNET occupies this layer for procurement. Model-agnostic. Tool-agnostic. Organisation-agnostic.
The technologies named below are categories and open standards, given to illustrate what sits at each layer. Concert does not endorse, certify, or require any particular vendor or product.
Why now
Three forces converging
The regulatory window is open
Three jurisdictions are simultaneously demanding the openness, interoperability, and digital capability that SIGNETs provide. The UK Procurement Act 2023 mandates digital-first transparency. The EU ViDA regulation mandates structured e-invoicing across all member states by 2030. The US FAR overhaul moves toward machine-readable compliance. Building on open standards converts compliance burden into architectural advantage.
The platform model is failing
SAP Ariba processes $3.75 trillion annually but locks in both buyers and suppliers. Coupa was taken private by Thoma Bravo for $8 billion. Trade finance networks (We.trade, Marco Polo, Contour, TradeLens) all closed between 2022–2023. The enduring successes — SWIFT, PEPPOL — prove that open standards, clear governance, and anchor-buyer pull are the necessary conditions for network viability.
The harness layer is the opportunity
Models are becoming interchangeable. The real $100 billion infrastructure opportunity is the harness — the execution layer that every model runs through. SIGNET is the procurement harness: model-agnostic, tool-agnostic, organisation-agnostic. Whoever owns this layer controls how intelligence becomes production work.
Three entities, one ecosystem
Steward. Standard. Operator.
Concert (the steward), SIGNET (the standard), and Score (the operator) are deliberately separate. Concert owns the IP and licenses it to commercial operators including Score. This separation prevents standard capture, enables competition among operators, and keeps the consortium neutral.
Concert
The neutral consortium stewarding the standard, publishing specifications, and protecting the ecosystem's integrity. Implementations can be SIGNET Certified against a public, machine-runnable suite — identical for every implementer; no certifications have been issued yet. Concert owns the IP and licenses it to commercial operators.
SIGNET
Secure Intelligent Governed Network for Exchange and Trade — the open specification for procurement networks. Model-agnostic. Tool-agnostic. Organisation-agnostic.
Score
The commercial entity building and operating SIGNET-compliant networks — provisioning, integration, agent orchestration, and managed services.