Blockchain Technology: Key for the Digital Transformation of Supply Chain

By CIOReview | Tuesday, March 12, 2019

Today, blockchain technology plays an essential role in the digitalization of the supply chain. Blockchain tech helps in maintaining compliance among supply chain partners and eliminates the need for siloed databases. Blockchain also offers faster processing time and real-time updates to supply chains.

The global industries are significantly interested in blockchain technology evolving supply chains. Blockchain technology provides secure communications and transactions to businesses. It is the purest form of a ledger-based system allowing data entry in blocks that facilitate the process of recording transactions and also helps in tracking assets in a business network.

The e-commerce application of blockchain technology tracks the entire manufacturing and logistics process of a product reducing the risk of counterfeit products being purchased from B2B (business-to-business) partners and suppliers.

Applications of blockchain tech in supply chains include Automotive Supplier Payments, Meat Traceability, Electric Power Micro-grids, RIFD (Radio Frequency Identification) driven Contract bids and execution, and Cold Chain Monitoring. Along with these applications in the supply chain, the critical blockchain features of Bitcoin also align with the basic needs for reliability and integrity in a supply chain. The blockchain features include Consensus, Provenance, Immutability, and Finality.

Blockchain technology adds value and transparency to supply chains. The businesses are leveraging benefits and profits from blockchain technology in areas such as smart contracts which ends costly procure-to-pay gaps. Other benefits of adding blockchain technology are getting better visibility into procurements, accurate and more reliable data for analytics and increased trust among all participants in the supply chain networks or infrastructures.

The blockchain tech also helps in bringing rigor to purchase order payments or demand chains where real demand signals propagate the upstream supply chain faster and quicker. Building a blockchain in the supply chain is going to be the end-all solution to existing problems. Blockchain technology is crucial as it alone provides end-to-end security and visibility in businesses.

Using cloud-based platforms and IoT devices and networks with blockchain technology is a practical and strategic step in business networks. Businesses that integrate blockchain technology with existing platforms will empower the enterprise to handle the demands of tomorrow’s customers.

With the recent advancements and improvements, blockchain tech can manage any form of exchange, agreement or tracking process.