Blockchain is probably not a household word yet, but in the next decade its effect on businesses will rival the transformative capabilities from the Internet. The opportunity applying blockchain are endless, and then for retailers blockchain will be revolutionary, write Cognizant’s Steven Skinner and Lata Varghese.

Blockchain generates a digital peer-to-peer network that allows direct transactions among users. Its distributed and immutable nature eliminates costly redundancy and enables trust, eliminating the necessity for and price of an intermediary. Public blockchains, including Bitcoin, are anonymous and available to anyone, while permissioned blockchains, including could be found across a logistics, comprise categories of connected stakeholders which have a vested interest in doing work together. Permissioned blockchains offer privacy, security and scalability and are well suited to the demands of an enterprise environment.

Highly secure by design, blockchains provide enhanced transparency utilizing a distributed ledger and public key encryption techniques that protect sensitive information while allowing verification and authentication of knowledge by all of its users. In place, this creates some books for your complex, Logistics Books, enabling retailers to detail the complete transaction history of a product or service from source to sale without each retailer giving out control over its data and assets.

Blockchain allows retailers to validate a product’s provenance and guarantee authenticity, helping combat counterfeit goods and reinforce the need for premium products. This is particularly crucial that you bottom and top line growth being an estimated $461 billion in imported counterfeit goods hit the entire world market every year, in line with the OECD along with the Eu Intellectual Property Office. While there are several applications for blockchain in the retail world, its business value to the logistics is most readily apparent and just understood.

Blockchain technologies are truly transformational to the logistics

Blockchains can leverage so-called smart contracts in the logistics to carry out actions with different specified group of triggers, creating both controls and efficiencies. By way of example, when a retailer confirms receipt of the shipment on the blockchain, an intelligent contract might automatically initiate payment to the appropriate parties. Or, an intelligent contract could automatically trigger performance of an insurance coverage when a sensor detects anomalies inside a storage warehouse. Smart contracts could also be accustomed to make procurement decisions with different defined group of attributes, streamlining the procurement process. Building a transformational blockchain network can drive efficiencies over the entire logistics, lower costs and counter-party risks through disintermediation, and improve customer relationships by offering indisputable evidence authenticity.

Because blockchain adoption in the retail companies are an ageing technology, many executives wonder if to act now or wait-and-see before jumping on board. A fantastic starting point would be to define use cases for blockchain that address particular pain points or improve optimisation. After that, developing evidence concepts and executing pilots will help figure out how, when or whether to unleash the strength of blockchain across your organisation’s logistics.

Understanding blockchain’s implications to the industry can now drive future decisions about technology and invite executives to help how blockchains evolve. Those found on the forefront will shape blockchain’s evolution to be perfect for the requirements their organisations thereby driving competitive advantage. Blockchain technologies are truly transformational to the logistics, and will require change with a cultural, technological, and business process level just like those of the net. Those that don’t start that evolution now may pay the price for late adoption.

Related: ‘Blockchain Technology: The ins and outs, main advantages and challenges’ and ‘Consortium launches blockchain technology initiative for logistics’.
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