Blockchain technology could be shaking up a supply chain close to you. It’s smarter, it’s faster, and yes it gets more participants on board.
Within a recent piece at Harvard Business Review, Michael J. Casey and Pindar Wong notice that blockchain — a web based globally distributed general ledger that keeps track of transactions via online “smart contracts” — will produce “dynamic demand chains rather than rigid supply chains, causing more effective resource use for many.” They notice that a number of startups are arising around blockchain-enabled supply chains, and firms for example Walmart, IBM and BHP Billiton are launching efforts to better track the movement of merchandise and data.
Blockchain — enhanced by electronic tracking technology — are only able to help speed up supply chains, while adding greater intelligence on the way, they argue. “It could be especially powerful when coupled with smart contracts, where contractual rights and obligations, including the terms for payment and delivery of merchandise and services, could be automatically executed by an autonomous system that’s trusted by all signatories.”
A panel discussion held at the recent 2017 SAP Ariba LIVE conference in Vegas grew more animated in the event the subject of Supply Chain Books emerged. The panelists, tech leaders at SAP Ariba, explored the chance of advanced cloud services in helping to apply artificial intelligence and machine learning how to a variety of business supply chain processes. Dana Gardner, principal analyst at Interarbor Solutions, moderated.
Blockchain “will have huge influence on the best way people glance at the business network,” predicted Dinesh Shahane, chief technology officer for SAP Ariba. “Blockchain reaches over to the boundary of one’s network, to faraway locations where we’re not even associated with, and brings that into a governance model where all your processes and your transactions are captured within the central network.”
Blockchain works in enabling more intelligence business processes due to the distributed trust and transparency, which will bring more people into connected supply-chain networks, said Sanjay Almeida, senior v . p . and chief product officer of Network Solutions for SAP Ariba. “We have an overabundance than 2.5 million buyers and suppliers transacting for the SAP Ariba Network – but there are billions of individuals that are certainly not for the network. Obviously we would like to make them. The use of the blockchain technology to create that trust together, it’s a federated trust model. Then our supply chain can be many more efficient, much more trustworthy. It’ll increase the efficiency, and all the risk that’s linked to managing suppliers is going to be managed better by utilizing that technology.”
The power in blockchain is its capability to scale, Almeida continued. “You want the scale of an SAP Ariba, hold the scale from the number of suppliers, the quantity of business that happens for the network. So you’ve got to experience a scale and technology together to produce that happen.”
You’ll find challenges that ought to be addressed before blockchain can proliferate across supply chains, however. First, there is the should overcome embedded, calcified corporate thinking. Business leaders and organizations should open up to the sharing of information with mainly unseen network partners. “Enterprises are certainly not used to really exposing that kind of information in a shape or form – or these are very secretive regarding it,” said Sudhir Bhojwani, senior v . p . in the product suite for SAP Ariba. “For them to suddenly take part in this requires a big change on his or her side. It requires seeing ‘what will be the benefit for me, exactly what is the value who’s offers me?'” This type of thinking is slowly coming around, he added. “You hear more companies – especially for the payment side – needs to take part in blockchain…. It’s still a technology only before companies am getting at, ‘Hey, here is the value … however have to change myself too.'”
In their article, Casey and Wong also notice that overall governance and standards are challenges to implementing blockchain to deal with supply chains over a global scale. There is the open, public blockchains, but, “inevitably, private, closed ledgers operated by a consortium of companies will also arise, as his or her members look to protect business and profits.” In addition, “there must be interoperability across public and private blockchains, that may require standards and agreements.”
Legislation — which change from place to place — also pose difficult to global scaling of blockchain, Casey and Wong add. “Even before governments could be convinced to support this effort, and do so inside a globally coordinated way, industry must agree with recommendations and standards of technology and contract structure across international borders and jurisdictions.”
But alterations in thinking are inevitable, Bhojwani believes, noting that major shifts have already happened within the consumer world. The incoming generation of employees and business leaders will help drive this change too. “I personally rely on next 3-5 years when there are more-and-more Millennials within the workforce, you will observe people adopting blockchain and new ledgers in a faster pace,” he predicted.
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