Examples of blockchain in healthcare, retail, shipping, supply chain, banking, or any other industry share overlapping core benefits to reduce costs, boost profits, and deliver better customer experiences.
If you’re searching for some input on blockchain, no worries – opinions on blockchain are plentiful. Some say blockchain is another too-good-to-be-true fad.
Others see in blockchain the potential and opportunity to innovate how business is done, to improve security and processes as well as make a positive impact on people’s lives and the environment.
Rapid development of AI, machine learning, and the Internet of Things along with digital transformation and implementation of the Intelligent Enterprise have provided fertile ground for testing blockchain proof of concept across industries.
Despite any remaining challenges and limitations to implementing blockchain, companies have invested in the technology to adapt and leverage its multifaceted potential for transformation, innovation, and security.
Leveraging technology: 5 examples of blockchain across industries
- Healthcare
“If it’s not broke, don’t fix it,” the old saying goes. Well, healthcare, in the U.S. at least, is broken, and those who need medical care are going broke. When nearly 20% of the nation’s GDP is spent on healthcare, something is broken, badly.
However, many leaders in the healthcare industry are exploring blockchain and AI innovations to lower healthcare costs through increased efficiency and security of processes and the way information and data are managed.
From audit efficiency to accurate record-keeping and billing to reduction of human error and bias to improved customer experience and healthcare data privacy, blockchain can help ensure the integrity of healthcare information and its management, including consent to share that information in accordance with varying regulations.
- Retail
With e-commerce taking center stage as the way customers prefer to shop, blockchain proves to be increasingly valuable and eventually necessary for improving customer experience, cybersecurity, and more. As types and preferences of payment method multiply, retailers must adapt to the ways in which consumers want to pay. This has retailers looking to blockchain for at least a couple of reasons.
First, blockchain is the technology on which the cryptocurrency Bitcoin operates, and growing numbers of customers prefer to pay with some form of cryptocurrency. More generally, blockchain technology enables e-commerce retailers to prove the identity of online customers, preventing fraud and reputation damage and increasing transaction security for both consumers and retailers alike.
- Shipping
Efficiency and profitability go hand-in-hand. Add increased security, and you have the main ingredients for what makes blockchain such a versatile solution across industries. Shipping, transportation, and logistics are no exception.
Some examples of blockchain enabling cost savings on several day-to-day operations with:
- shared decentralized digital ledger to facilitate smoother, faster payment
- expedited processing for time- and temperature-sensitive shipments
- minimized logistical friction translates to reduced environmental impact
- data authenticity and security allow greater accountability when shipments pass through dozens of organizations by enabling problem location
All of this can be achieved at scale with a level of sustainability, efficiency, profitability, and security previously impossible before the development and implementation of blockchain technology.
- Supply chain
Related to and including shipping, supply chain management has benefited from the decentralized digital ledger. With the integration of smart machines and the Internet of Things, manufacturing has leveraged blockchain to optimize logistics of on-time delivery of materials, production management, and shipping.
Blockchain has made the lives of managers better, but it has also been used to improve the lives of people in several industries globally.
Blockchain is being used to dramatically improve the lives of people in industries across the globe, from improved food safety to greater data security to increased transparency in fashion to economic equality for women coffee producers to counteracting the sale of blood diamonds.
- Banking and finance
Finance has been one of industries to benefit most obviously from the efficiency and security enabled by blockchain as a secure decentralized digital ledger. That is, after the banking industry got past the perceived threat from cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, since cryptocurrencies and blockchain are separable.
Eventually the out-of-control costs of cyberattacks and cumbersome processing of global payments motivated a change of perception and an openness to the enhancements that blockchain has the potential to offer. These enhancements include parts of traditional banking such as loan offerings, securities trading, credit monitoring, and international payments.
This has opened the door to blockchain’s unique strengths such as real-time tracking, smart contracts, dispute settlement, and, of course, the added cost-saving security and efficiency.
Blockchain at the intersections of efficiency, security, sustainability, and humanity
In only a few years blockchain has gone from subversive geek tech to a serious game changer across sectors and industries on a global scale, with countless examples of blockchain popping up everywhere.
Increasing revenue and cutting costs by enabling greater efficiency and security, blockchain has endless opportunities to meet desperate needs in a global economy that has grown more quickly than carefully or sustainably.
With so many companies testing and developing blockchain applications for such a wide variety of industries, the time to maturity is shrinking and the reach and availability of its potential benefits grow as a vital aspect of digital transformation and building the Intelligent Enterprise for organizations of all sizes.