In 2015, blockchain (the technology that makes digital currencies such as bitcoin work) was starting to be explored as a solution for supply chains. It promised cost savings, increased efficiency, and heightened transparency, among other benefits. For that reason, many companies were happy to run pilots testing blockchain for themselves. Today, these small-scale projects have been replaced by large-scale enterprise adoption of blockchain-based supply chain solutions. There are plenty of choices now for blockchain supply chain products, platforms, and providers. This makes the option to use blockchain available now to nearly everyone in the sector. This wealth of choice does, however, make it more difficult to decide which blockchain integration is best (or, indeed, if your organization needs to use it at all). To find the right blockchain, companies need to consider three factors: cost, sustainability, and the ultimate goal of trying new technology.
Choosing the right blockchain for an enterprise supply chain begins with the most basic consideration: cost. Blockchains work by securely recording “transactions,” and in a supply chain, those transactions are essentially database updates. However, making such updates has varying costs on different chains. If a container moves locations, that entry is updated, and a transaction is recorded. Enterprises need to figure out how many products, containers, or pieces of information they will process daily. Each of these can be considered a transaction. Now, some blockchains cost not even $1 to record a million movements. Other chains can cost thousands of dollars for the same amount of recording. Understanding the amount of activity you will need to record against the cost of transactions is the first place for an enterprise to start when considering blockchain. Ask the provider which blockchain their product is built on, and its average transaction cost. This will help you find the most cost-effective product or integration.
The question of cost becomes even more important when your supply chain partners have other transparency obligations, like that of a “Protected Designation of Origin” product. This kind of requirement means that your adoption of blockchain will likely involve more transactions, or records, to serve your purpose, which means utilizing a blockchain with lower costs is imperative. This was the case for producers of Fontina cow’s cheese. This is a “Protected Designation of Origin cheese,” which means it must come from the Aosta Valley (and only the Aosta Valley) in Italy. Utilizing blockchain helps prove the provenance of this artisanal cheese to its customers and partners, which is one of the reasons it was adopted by the group responsible for its production (the Consortium of Producers and Protection of Fontina PDO). However, when reporting on their adoption of blockchain in their supply chain, they also acknowledged that the potential high costs of using the technology were a concern (but this was allayed by their choice of blockchain platform and design of their pilot).
The second consideration is sustainability. Supply chain partners are being pressured to deliver on ambitious environmental, social, and governance (ESG) targets across the board. The addition of new technologies to any system, especially technologies like blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI) that are known for their energy use, can be counterproductive to meeting these expectations. However, just as different blockchains have different costs to run transactions, so too do different chains have different environmental footprints. This can also be easily vetted by asking your provider if the chain is proof-of-work or proof-of-stake.
Proof-of-work is most well-known because it is used by bitcoin, and can cost an extremely high amount of energy and electricity to run. If the blockchain is proof-of-stake, it is more likely to be environmentally friendly. The good news is that many supply chain and logistics service providers are stepping in to offer these greener blockchains as an option for their projects. One of these is Finboot in Spain, which worked with the energy company CEPSA to implement blockchain to trace vegetable oil from its source to its end use in its biodegradable surfactant production. Still, ask for their sustainability credentials anyway. If there’s any reason to doubt that the blockchain being used or the solution being proposed is carbon-neutral, the solution has to be disregarded. There’s just no reason to adopt more technology if it will present more problems later on.
The final consideration is the toughest but also the most rewarding: the ultimate goal of adopting blockchain. What improvement is the most important to your business? Blockchain could address several of them. For example, there is a movement towards maintaining a fair trade for goods like chocolate and coffee. However, the true “fairness” of the provenance is only as good as the records. Blockchain can help here, as proven by the household Italian coffee brand Lavazza.They integrated blockchain to simplify and streamline the supply chain journey of its La Reserva de Tierra Cuba coffee bean, making it easy for consumers to see the journey from farm to cup. Each coffee bean harvest and reception, environmental data and processing information, quality control, and transportation are recorded on a publicly available blockchain for the company and the consumer to use. They are also using a carbon-neutral chain with low costs, helping them hit their sustainability as well as their fair-trade goals.
Improving internal provenance records is also a valid reason to adopt blockchain, making it easier to maintain a stringent, auditable record that can be provided to other departments, shareholders, governments, or regulators. This kind of provenance can be more detailed and more sensitive to attempts to access or change the data. So, using blockchain to certify medicine shipments, as one example, allows an enterprise to securely control a record of authentic, noncounterfeit medications. This is especially important if counterfeit medicines end up causing harm and government agencies investigate. Otherwise, blockchain can help make supply chains more resilient to digital attacks or intrusion, reduce costs of maintaining records, fight the threat of counterfeit goods, and more.
The supply chain sector is under pressure to be even more efficient and reliable despite a challenging economic and geopolitical landscape. Still,a recent report from EY stated that enterprises plan to “shake up their supply chain strategies to become more resilient, sustainable, and collaborative with customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders.” If that is the case for your organization, then certainly blockchain can help you. Blockchain’s internal provenance and integrity makes a supply chain more resilient, including by helping identify potential disruptions early, streamlining regulatory compliance and internal audits, and detecting counterfeit products and fraudulent activities. Blockchain is also a tool for collaboration with your stakeholders. Lavazza is just one example of how it can be used to give customers verifiable information about product origin, journey, and authenticity, building confidence and loyalty through transparency and traceability. And if you choose a blockchain that is itself sustainable, it can help achieve sustainability goals too. The most important filter, however, remains the ultimate goal. What do you want to improve or change about your operations? If the answer involves becoming more resilient, more transparent, or more efficient, blockchain can help. Use this goal to evaluate your options first, followed by an analysis of costs and its sustainability metrics. By considering these three factors, you are more likely to find a scalable, resilient, and efficiency-delivering use of blockchain in your supply chain business.
