How can SMBs benefit from blockchain tech?
The quantity of the “blockchain” keyword in Google search requests has drastically increased by 250% for the last year. But it’s getting clear that this rapidly evolving tech is not just overhyped but fairly considered to be a powerful opportunity for businesses to drive innovation today.
The way blockchain transforms industries is a kind of revolution. Right now, it’s reshaping finance, retail, manufacturing and even healthcare, adding value to the outdated business models of these sectors. Large enterprises don’t waste a moment to seize all the opportunities and advantages that blockchain offers to ensure their success. But does the blockchain tech has the same potential for SMBs?
Today’s hyper-competitive and digitized market dictates new rules for business models, creating new challenges at the same time. That’s why small and mid-sized companies have to adopt and use more effective means to keep afloat. Blockchain is one of such useful tools.
Many SMBs prefer blockchain as it provides security, cost-, time- and resource-efficiency. There are countless ways blockchain can show off its capabilities, and nowhere its impact is more striking than in SMBs’ processes.
The Value Blockchain Brings to SMBs
Blockchain can retool big chunks of daily business operations. Being a digital ledger hosted by everyone in the network, the technology encrypts each new record into blocks. The data in those blocks is available to everyone in the network, but no one can change it once it’s added. No matter what they do, there’s no slightest possibility to amend or delete any information put into the ledger. Here’s how blockchain delivers its first benefit — security.
Moreover, such data immutability eliminates its vulnerability and gives no chances for hackers to breach it. As each data record is encrypted across different nodes, it is harder to disable the entire system since it will be still alive even if there’s only one node surviving the attack. With no central server, it’s practically impossible to knock off all the blockchain nodes simultaneously.
Blockchain is not about just another slow database. In fact, small and medium-sized businesses have to pay attention to its speed and efficiency. Traditional paper-heavy processes are too time-consuming and prone to human error. Blockchain streamlines and automates these processes, completing any kinds of transactions times faster. There’s also no need for third-party verification, such as by external auditors, as the ledger itself contains all the information necessary to verify the transaction.
By removing the need for intermediaries, blockchain opens up its next significantly valuable benefit — cost-efficiency. For the majority of businesses, reducing expenses is a number-one challenge and a number-one driver of adopting new tech. Leveraging the blockchain technology, business owners can massively reduce their transaction costs.
Blockchain Use Cases for SMBs
Advancing supply chain management is the most popular use case for blockchain across a variety of industries. Blockchain suits the task at hand, helping companies track the movement of goods through the supply chain and making products’ way to consumers more transparent and cost-efficient.
By streamlining warehousing and logistic processes, blockchain brings transparency and speed to the supply chain management model.
Smart contracts is one more blockchain-based approach to orchestrate and boost business operations. Smart contracts can help SMBs simplify the way a company cooperates with intermediaries and partners when it comes to money, property or value transfers.
Once a smart contract is created, it makes life easier even for small business, adding more speed and accuracy to conventional paper-based processes. Transactions within smart contracts are all automated and handled by software, which makes them less expensive and complex.
Plus, shareholders won’t question any piece of information in a smart contract, as it automatically executes and verifies transactions according to the predetermined rules. And, as far as we already know, there’s no way anyone could amend the data encrypted in a blockchain for personal benefit. This advantage also eliminates the need for drawing any intermediaries to validate the terms of an agreement.
What Is the Easiest Way to Adopt Blockchain?
The biggest challenge for SMBs, though, is blockchain adoption. With so many benefits, the tech might be too expensive and cumbersome to implement. Yet if that’s what you think, we have some good news for you.
Today, there are plenty of options for companies to get the maximum perks out of the blockchain technology with reasonable efforts and budgets. There are powerful and scalable platforms, like genEOS, that can help businesses build their own blockchain solutions quickly and easily.
genEOS is a full-fledged blockchain ecosystem, delivering the technology’s best offering both to large enterprises and small-to-mid-sized organizations. If you strive to turn your daily business operations into highly efficient workflows, this platform may be exactly what you need for a smooth start.
