Retail Information Systems, US: Cognizant Executives Discuss Blockchain’s Revolutionary Impact on Retail

“Understanding blockchain’s implications to the retail industry now can drive future decisions about technology and allow executives to influence how blockchains evolve,” write Cognizant's Steven Skinner, Senior Vice President and Products & Resources Consulting Leader, and Lata Varghese, Assistant Vice President, Blockchain Consulting Practice. “Those on the forefront will shape blockchain’s evolution to best suit the needs of their organizations thereby driving competitive advantage.” Excerpts:

“Blockchain may not be a household word yet, but over the next decade its impact on businesses will rival the transformative capabilities of the Internet. The potential applications of blockchain are endless, and for retailers blockchain will be revolutionary.

Highly secure by design, blockchains provide enhanced transparency using a distributed ledger and public key encryption techniques that protect sensitive information while allowing verification and authentication of data by all of its users. In effect, this creates one set of books for the complex, global supply chain, enabling retailers to detail the entire transaction history of a product from source to sale without each retailer giving away control of its data and assets.

Because blockchain in the retail industry is a maturing technology, many executives question whether to act now or wait-and-see before jumping on board. A good first step is to define use cases for blockchain that address particular pain points or improve optimization. From there, developing proof of concepts and executing pilots can help determine how, when or whether to unleash the power of blockchain across your organization’s supply chain.

Blockchain technology is truly transformational to the supply chain, and will require change on a cultural, technological, and business process level comparable to that of the Internet. Those that fail to embark on that evolution now may pay the price for late adoption.”

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