Digital Transformation for Businesses: How Can Blockchain Help?
New trends are inevitably impacting the business world – in the digital age, companies need to adopt innovative technologies to survive in a competitive environment. Enterprises have increasingly invested in digital transformation especially after the pandemic, implementing new business models to boost scalability, flexibility and cost control. Different services are being digitized, including online shopping, remote learning, and supply chain management. Through digital transformation, businesses can make strategic decisions and enhance their business processes, helping boost customer engagement and employee satisfaction.
Blockchain is a key technology that drives transformation in business. It has garnered public attention due to its relation to digital assets, but some still don’t understand what it is about. In fact, many believe blockchains and cryptocurrencies are synonyms, when they are actually two different concepts. Blockchain is the foundation for cryptocurrency – although the technology was first created for Bitcoin, it now enables the existence of other digital assets, including Ethereum. Although the current ethereum price may not be as outstanding as it once was, it’s hard to overlook the past performance of this digital asset – and its success has a lot to do with the merger of the blockchain and smart contracts. However, it’s worth noting that blockchain for business isn’t about crypto – the digital ledger is based on a P2P topology that enhances data resiliency, transactions’ transparency, and security while decreasing costs associated with running business operations. Therefore, companies shouldn’t miss out on blockchain’s incredible opportunities.
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Why Is the Traditional Business Model Inefficient?
Traditional business models may have once worked, but they are no longer effective in tackling global competition. Companies face different challenges, such as:
Time-consuming processes
In business, the processes act like distinct entities, so teams often search, collect and analyze the same information in the decision-making process. Not only that, but they also have to rely upon mediators to ensure the efficiency of the business processes. Unfortunately, this makes operations incredibly time-consuming.
Payment barriers
This is another challenge that businesses face, and it happens because different currencies are available across the globe and because of intermediaries’ involvement. This makes payment transfer a complex and costly process.
Lack of security
The traditional business model lacks robust security, so it can’t combat the growing cybersecurity issues. This leaves data vulnerable, making it easy for bad actors to exploit it.
High costs
Traditionally, employees of a company perform every process manually. In addition to this, every process requires the need of a third party, translating into heavy charges to complete them.
How Can Blockchain Transform Businesses?
After discussing the challenges that companies face, let’s take a look at how blockchain can be the ideal solution to improve the existing business model.
Ease of payment
One of the greatest applications of blockchain is in digital payments, removing third parties from the process and documentation like invoices. It also facilitates cash flow in business and establishments. For example, in a medical organization, blockchain enables you to claim to a patient’s insurance provider. But for this to be possible, the two need to be on the same platform. This way, the insurance company will know how many times the patient visited your medical company while having access to all the payment details. This helps ensure a transparent environment, allowing the organization to respond quickly to your claim.
Increased security
Blockchain has another great benefit for organizations: it introduces solid security measures. Due to features like transparency and decentralization, users on the network can safely and efficiently store and verify the data on the network. Through security considerations, the risk of cyberattack is considerably reduced. Using blockchain in business also allows users to ensure the protection of their identity.
Supply chain management
When it comes to supply chain, blockchain helps businesses track services and products during the entire process. Through immutability and transparency, it allows organizations to combat issues like product delivery delays and counterfeiting while guaranteeing security during supply chain.
Financial management
Companies must invest a lot of money to manage and enhance their existing system. As such, they look for solutions that can help them decrease costs and boost their processes. Fortunately, blockchain offers these benefits, eliminating any payment for vendors. Plus, a transaction can be validated without requiring much interaction, eliminating the need to spend time or money on basic tasks.
Customer engagement
Blockchain creates opportunities for customer engagement, allowing businesses to engage a wider audience. This is because the technology empowers users to control their data, incorporating transparency in the business model, enhancing the speed of the transactions, and helping marketers identify loyal customers.
Efficient hiring process
Blockchain also benefits the recruitment process by preventing candidates from building fake documents through tools like photoshop. This helps companies as it saves time required to get through all the documents and find the right candidate to hire. As a result, recruitment companies are looking to connect with reputable blockchain development enterprises, and taking advantage of the applications of the technology to improve their processes.
Better marketing campaigns
Marketing campaigns play a major role in helping companies thrive in the long run. Fortunately, blockchain’s disruptive nature also contributes to the business economy by empowering marketers to derive higher ROI through more effective campaigns. This is because they can monitor client information as well as customer behavior. Moreover, using blockchain in business enables traffic authentication from the real world, relishing greater outcomes from all the money invested in the process.
Blockchain in The Business World: What to Expect in The Future?
Regarding the future of blockchain, the technology can undoubtedly revolutionize the business world by introducing new concepts and making a better sense of what prevails in the market. Blockchain promises to transform companies in unimaginable ways through the efforts of application developers and entrepreneurs in the field. Many predictions on the future of blockchain have already been made, showing the technology’s great potential. For instance, blockchain is estimated to generate a value of nearly USD 3 trillion to businesses by 2030. In the same year, blockchain-based systems will likely govern 10%-20% of the global economic infrastructure as well. But that’s not all – the technology’s revenues are also expected to rise exponentially in the following years, surpassing USD 39 billion by 2025.
The bottom line
Blockchain’s potential is becoming more and more evident as many industries, including logistics, IT and manufacturing are embracing it as a solution to real-time challenges. Like other disruptive technologies such as Big Data and AI, blockchain also stands out through its capability to revamp different business verticals.