Is your Supply Chain ready for the Blockchain? Part 1
In most cases, across the globe, Supply Chains today operate in silos and with outdated technology.
The most critical supply chain challenges, despite years of efforts and often significant investments, are non-sustainable practices like - lack of transparency due to inconsistent or even unavailable data, a high proportion of manual (paper) work, lack of interoperability, and limited information on the product’s lifecycle or transport history.
The recent evolving global factors and geopolitical concerns globally like a possible resurgence in U.S. port congestion, spillover from the Russia-Ukraine conflict at Northern European ports, and COVID-19 lockdowns again in China, are some of the recent risk factors whose effects will soon be felt on the Global Supply Chain!
A report by the World Economic Forum together with the World Bank states that:
"Reducing supply chain barriers to trade could increase GDP by nearly 5% and international trade by 15%. Plus, Supply Chain barriers make it difficult for smaller businesses across the world to enter foreign markets".
Global players like Walmart or Carrefour already intend to deploy Blockchain for Supply Chain Management to increase transparency, remove obstacles and drive value at every step of the supply chain.
How can Blockchain technology make Supply Chain Management more efficient?
Blockchain can be the backbone of Modern Supply Chains.
What makes us say that?
- Replacing slow and manual processes: Most supply chain processes are slow because of multiple parties involved, and some of them rely entirely on paper, especially in the shipping industry.
- Traceability: Blockchain will help businesses understand their supply chain and engage consumers with real-time, verifiable, and immutable data.
- Transparency: All the information available on public blockchains is open source and can be accessed by anyone.
- Sustainable impact on the ecosystem
Furthermore, Web 3-generation blockchains are scalable, allowing for the seamless integration of any number of participants without compromising data consistency. Due to their independence from legacy and older systems, they are transparent because Data has been recorded in a block that cannot be changed after it has been done so and has distributed storage which makes it incredibly challenging to compromise the security of the network. Each link in the chain is in possession of the entire data set. Blockchain technology appears to be the perfect answer to the issues that now plague the supply chain.
Companies across a range of industries are currently debating whether to adopt this emerging technology now and reap the rewards of being early adopters or to wait until technology integration is less expensive and the benefits are more certain.
To summarise,
Every technology has its early and late adopters. Therefore, what becomes mandatory before considering implementing Blockchain technology in Supply Chain Networks is to become,
- aware of the existing challenges and obstacles that need to be overcome via the implementation
- the impact it has on the everyday business functioning
- the willingness for Organizations to transform to obtain the benefits of the distributed nature of blockchain.
- financial factors at play
Finally, selecting the most appropriate Blockchain platform is a very crucial factor here. Firms should consider whether the Blockchain platform actually provides a mechanism that matches the business requirements, a smart contract that meets the business needs, security, privacy, and scalability at the highest level and perceived ease with which switching to new technology can be adopted effectively across the organization
Archethic Public Blockchain can be a game changer here and has the potential to transform the supply chain industry. We will talk in-depth about the power, and the promise offered by Archethic Blockchain in the Global Supply Chain Management Cycle in our Part 2 article in this series.
Archethic Public Blockchain
Archethic is a Layer 1 blockchain that seeks to empower people over data ownership, decentralized applications over slow internet, and cost-effective energy solutions over expensive carbon emissions.
Due to the use of a new consensus called "ARCH," its blockchain architecture is the most scalable, secure, and energy-efficient solution on the market.
With the addition of an internal oracle, time-triggers, editable content, and interpreted language, Archethic smart contracts broaden the capabilities of developers and builders!
Archethic provides an open and interoperable ecosystem for all blockchains with native integration for Defi, NFTs, and decentralized identities.
Let us work together to empower {Human; Nature; Apps} era of Web3
Archethic Foundation, a Non-profit to manage decentralized governance of the public blockchain