Blockchain's Interruption: integrating new technologies into business processes

The nature of the business and how it is executed nowadays has drastically changed, mainly due to the increasing role that the digital arena plays in our daily lives. With the popularization of the digital world, businesses must quickly adapt and maintain their ability to show flexibility with the dynamic and constantly changing emerging trends. From the importance of digitizing your marketing strategy with quality content to making online transactions, businesses are increasingly pressured to incorporate new solutions into their mix just to stay competitive.
Regardless of the business sphere, you are involved in, you most likely have already been familiarized with the term Blockchain and its rising popularity. But what does it really mean and how can businesses integrate it within their existing organization, without doing much damage to the whole system? To shed some light on this exciting newcomer into the digital era, we will look into what Blockchain really is, its potential business interruption and how the new technology can become part of your business without unnecessary damage done.

 

Blockchain – What is it?

Transactions will never be the same after the birth of Blockchain. Blockchain, in basic terms, is a peer-to-peer network where online transactions are facilitated. There are no requirements for centralized control in this system and the necessity of a middleman is omitted. The online transactions are also encrypted or secure. Because the nature of Blockchain is to serve as a public electronic edge, the stored transactional data cannot be changed and will always link back to the first transaction made. Once information enters the Blockchain, it can never be deleted and is stored for eternity.

However, it is important to understand that Blockchain is not a single technology and Computerworld depict this in a great way:

 

How Popular is Blockchain?

There are a vast number of reasons why businesses should consider adopting this new technology into their existing systems. We are still at the phase of employing older methods into an innovative and quickly developing world but trends show that more and more companies are looking to implement modern technology to make business processes easier, safer and more accessible. Although Blockchain is highly related to cryptocurrency, it can be applied to other businesses as well.

The technology is gaining speed in receiving popularization around the world due to its vast benefits for businesses. According to research by Crypto Currency News, 15 percent of healthcare applications have already implemented Blockchain for commercial use in 2017. It is especially popular among senior IT figures in different industries as 13 percent share that they intend to apply the technology to their business structures. In North America and Europe, 90 percent of banks are using a Blockchain solution and 80 percent of bankers forecast to witness the commercial implementation of the technology by 2020.

The blockchain is also popular in sectors such as Insurance, Charity, Cloud Technologies, Voting, Government, Healthcare, Online Music, Retail, Real Estate, Crowdfunding, and many more. Perhaps the secret behind its rapid growth is that every business – even a company like Handmadewriting, who provide essay-writing services – could benefit from implementing it. In other words, Blockchain is here and it’s here to stay!

 

The Benefits

With the evolution of the digital world, it is only natural that the way businesses function also evolves. Integrating Blockchain into your business system provides valuable benefits such as:
• Saving time and money
• Improving your business’ security
• Providing more transparency to involved users and other parties
• Top quality records keeping with an eternal saving of information
• Reducing the risk of fraud
• Allowing the use of smart contracts
• Providing a high level of privacy
• Decentralization and no need of a middleman
Sounds tempting, right? Blockchain has been especially lucrative for businesses due to its ability to decrease costs for cross-border payments by up to 3 percent, as well as minimize the expenses for cloud computing and business operations. So new technology is maybe not bad at all?

 

Implementing New Technologies

The evolution of Blockchain is great for some but will definitely have a disastrous effect on the way banking and financing have worked until now. For businesses looking to evolve and reach a new level of sophistication, the adoption of new technologies is certain and unquestioned. The implementation of Blockchain into the existing business system aims to achieve synchronization and automation of processes, allowing for a smoother operation.
Implementing Blockchain is likely to make a number of back-end processes better organized and increase efficiency but could also lead to the replacement of whole companies. The good news is that wherever something vanishes, a new opportunity is usually created. It is likely that after the proper implementation of Blockchain in business processes more services and products will be born. Potential areas of evolution would include the creation and trade of assets, tracking provenance, identity management or offering different services to the new software.

In order to implement Blockchain into your business, it is essential to hire the right team of experts who will fully understand your existing processes and allow for the smooth transition to Blockchain, without harming your existing operations. This new technology provides the world with a new way of making payments around the globe, trading stocks, bonds, and commodities, even providing your regulators with regular audits. Its opportunities are endless and it is time for businesses to look on the other side of innovation and grow with technology.

If you’re still worried about the future and the rising technology, it is worth noting that 25 percent of Global 2000 companies would have implemented Blockchain as the foundation for digital trust by 2021.

Donna Moores

Donna Moores