There has been a significant amount of hype around cryptocurrencies and blockchain in the last five years, with business to business (B2B) blockchain applications slowly starting to gain traction in leading-edge organizations.

Although blockchain is the underlying technology for cryptocurrencies, the technology can be separated from a cryptocurrency, such as Bitcoin or Ethereum, and used in a B2B environment where a high degree of visibility and/or security is essential. Significant opportunities exist for companies that strive to understand the capabilities of blockchain technology and creatively apply the technology as a solution to business transactions.

Successful organizations will benefit from a reduction in overall costs of processing, monitoring, validating and executing transactions between a buyer and seller of products - and in other areas across the entire supply chain. Understanding the capabilities of the underlying technology is imperative to ensure that the value and benefits clearly outweigh the costs and risks of implementation.

Business-to-Business Blockchain

Benefits Blockchain technology has the capability to optimize business processes that are manual, paper-based and dependent on human interaction - and that often lead to mistakes or are left undone altogether. Blockchain technology delivers solutions to business problems previously thought unsolvable due to lack of transparency, security and trust in the ecosystem.

The four primary problems that blockchain technology tackles are commonplace across industries:

  • Provenance - Blockchain technology was designed to be immutable, which allows for the ability to track or trace the origination of a product to the beginning of a process in seconds. With 100% traceable and guaranteed origin data on products, transparent and real-time tracking throughout the waypoints of the supply chain, and cryptographically secured digital records in compliance with agreed-upon business rules, blockchain delivers a real-world solution to an age-old, time-consuming process.

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