A new report by the Capgemini Research Institute revealed that blockchain could become ubiquitous by 2025, entering mainstream business and underpinning supply chains worldwide. Through investment and partnerships, the distributed ledger technology will dominate manufacturing as well as consumer products and retail industries, ushering in a new era of transparency and trust.
The report, “Does blockchain hold the key to a new age of supply chain transparency and trust?”, provides a comprehensive overview into the businesses and geographies that are ramping up their blockchain readiness, and predicts that blockchain will enter mainstream use in supply chains by 2025. Currently, just 3% of organizations that are deploying blockchain do so at scale and 10% have a pilot in place, with 87% of respondents reporting to be in the early stages of experimentation with blockchain.
Despite the optimism surrounding blockchain deployments, concerns remain around establishing a clear return-on-investment, and interoperability between partners in a supply chain. The majority (92%) of pacesetters point to establishing ROI as the greatest challenge to adoption, and 80% cite interoperability with legacy systems as a major operational challenge. Additionally, 82% point to the security of transactions as inhibiting partner adoption of their blockchain applications, undermining blockchain’s status as a secure technology.
Sudhir Pai, Chief Technology Officer for Financial Services at Capgemini said, “There are some really exciting use cases in the marketplace that are showing the benefits of blockchain for improving the supply chain, but blockchain is not a silver bullet solution for an organization’s supply chain challenges. Blockchain’s ROI has not yet been quantified, and business models and processes will need to be redesigned for its adoption. Effective partnerships are needed across the supply chain to build an ecosystem-based blockchain strategy, integrated with broader technology deployments, to ensure that it can realize its potential.”
Despite the barriers facing blockchain today, organizations are trying to drive wider adoption now while the technology is in its early stage. One example is the Mobility Open Blockchain Initiative (MOBI), a consortium comprised of a group of auto and tech companies focused on getting carmakers to assign digital identities to vehicles so that cars and systems can transact with each other.
