From insurance to healthcare, supply chain management to disbursement of loans,
From insurance to healthcare, supply chain management to disbursement of loans, blockchain has been used by businesses across the world in more and more exciting and innovative ways. The various ways in which the technology has been used is telling of its immense potential. Naturally, it’s being increasingly embraced by business houses for a reason and that reason is that they offer a host of benefits to businesses.
Let’s have a look at some of them:
1. Ability to Trace and Track: A large number of businesses have some sort of a supply chain system that needs to be monitored. The movements of products from warehouses to stores to customers must also be traced. Blockchain, with its transparent, immutable and chronologically updated ledger system helps achieve just that. It provides companies with an audit trail that comes in handy in ascertaining how funds were utilized and products distributed.
2. Cost-effectiveness: Using blockchain frequently renders the use of middlemen unnecessary. When businesses use smart contracts in blockchain, they can have deals delivered and payments disbursed upon the meeting of certain stipulated criteria. This removes the need for having too many administrative officials to verify documents, validate deals and release funds. This helps cut costs to a large extent and injects a great degree of convenience in the process. The fact that it also makes peer-to-peer transactions possible helps cut costs as well.
3. Faster and More Efficient: Reducing the number of middlemen not only cuts cost but also makes it more speedy and efficient because there’s no longer any need to have officials pore over paper-heavy documents and take decisions. There’s also no longer any need to involve multiple people in decision making when blockchain technology can achieve all of that by using pre-set stipulations. The records are also maintained in one common ledger visible to all members of the network and this helps ensure everyone has the same trustworthy source of verifying information.
4. Security: A blockchain makes sure all nodes that are participants to the network are in agreement with the transactions being updated and the encrypted ledger is structured in such a way that every block is chained to the preceding one inexorably. While not completely fail-safe, it provides added layers of security against hackers. All businesses have a large amount of confidential data and blockchain serves as the perfect way to store that. In more sensitive industries such as healthcare, government administration or financial services, this confidentiality and security aspect becomes all the more important. By shielding the information from unauthorized access and activity, blockchain makes it easier and safer to run businesses.
5. Transparency: Transparency is crucial to the functioning of any organization and businesses are no different. By having consensus-based records available for all participants to view as and when they are updated, it eliminates the need to drown in paperwork and lose relevant details pertinent to business.
With all these benefits, it’s no wonder businesses are gradually making a move to blockchain.