7 signs you should be looking at blockchain

There are many possible applications for blockchain in enterprises. Being able to determine where it can have the most impact in your organisation may not be obvious to you. If you’re experiencing any of the following problems, you’ll have a good place to start.

There is a lot of time-consuming and manual reporting that has to happen monthly, quarterly, bi-annually that involves pulling data from multiple sources across the organisation.
You do not trust the numbers being presented to you in these business reports. Perhaps the numbers are being manually input by staff meaning that they are subject to human error. At the other extreme, these are management reports from other divisions where you simply don’t believe the numbers.
Reconciliations are a necessary evil in your business, that break and take up a lot of time to fix.
You rely on expensive intermediaries for core parts of your business.
You lack transparency of where assets go once they leave your business.
You’re concerned that your competitors are already seeing benefits from the technology.
You’re not clear on what are the benefits of blockchain to your organisation.

To support the above, it’s important to see how a number of well-known organisations are already using blockchain at scale. Here are just a few.

1. Time-consuming and manual reporting

Microsoft’s XBox division managed to reduce the processing time for the calculation of royalties for their game development partners by 99% providing near real-time calculation of royalties. This was achieved using digital contracts that existed on a blockchain.

2. You do not trust the numbers

In addition to their standard reporting obligations, companies are now starting to have to report on their environmental activities. Having transparency on how carbon emissions and offsets are being measured and reported is vital. In recognition of this, KPMG has started offering their Climate Accounting Infrastructure services. This capability uses blockchain to provide a verifiable trail of emissions and offsets activity for organisations.

3-4. Reconciliations and intermediaries

The reconciling of inter-bank payments is the bane of many back-office staff members at financial institutions. Intermediaries often exist in these transactions when they need to cross borders, creating additional risk with payments. Banco Santander, Credit Suisse, ING and a number of other banks created Fnality to tokenize payments between banks. By providing a shared ledger for payments, the reconciliation burden and the dependency on intermediaries is reduced.

5. Lack of transparency

The Covantis platform created by Cargill, Louis Dreyfus Company and other commodity trading and shipping companies provides end to end transparency of the transit of goods on their network.

6. Competitor threats

Forbes’ annual Blockchain 50 report provides a great rundown of how some of the world’s largest companies across a number of verticals are benefiting from blockchain technology.

7. Benefits to your organisation

Hopefully, by making it this far you’re starting to see some of the benefits that blockchain and distributed ledger technology could bring to your organisation. However, if you still would like to know more, the following video summarises some of the key strengths of blockchain and the organizational benefits that can be achieved through its use.

Next steps

If you’ve identified with any of the tell-tale signs highlighted in this article, it indicates that your organisation could benefit from using blockchain technology. The examples given above demonstrate organisations that have successfully identified similar problems within their company processes that are now reaping the benefits from blockchain solutions.

If you’d like to learn more about the opportunities outlined above and appreciate how they could apply to your business, schedule a time to speak with us today.

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