Blockchain technology is a red-hot topic in the news these days and in many C-suite discussions. It has wide applicability to many industries and most companies. Like any emerging technology, companies that aren’t first movers tend to look for proven use cases and often wait for the technology to mature. But that may not be your best strategy with blockchain. Adoption has accelerated, and new use cases occur almost daily showing blockchain’s potential for revolutionizing a business as well as creating new markets. I believe every organization needs to consider how it might apply to their business. Let’s look at what the technology is and several examples of how your company could benefit from it.
What is blockchain?
Blockchain is a decentralized digital distributed ledger shared by a peer-to-peer network of computers. It’s a mechanism that brings efficiencies, transparency, security, auditability and trust into shared business processes at a very broad level. The business process could be internal to an organization, or it could be among different external parties. The transactions are verified and recorded in the ledger almost instantly.