Blockchain has made a breakthrough entry in industrial and non-industrial sectors, riding on  its unique, supreme adaptability, easy adoption and practical features. Finally, entrepreneurs and industry leaders have started to see blockchain as a solution and not a competition.

According to the Casper Labs survey, 90% of businesses are looking to deploy blockchain into their existing business model.

The survey shows that despite the educational gap, the adoption of enterprise blockchain in the USA, UK and China will increase immensely by 2024.

Why are companies actively implementing blockchain solutions?

Blockchain decentralizes business processes. It simply means that blockchain eliminates the role of third parties in business processes. Therefore, it brings transparency into the system and establishes trust among involved parties. 

Moreover, blockchain with the help of smart contracts automates complex business models. Thus, in a way, it reduces human error and fraud which increases efficiency. 

Most importantly blockchain offers a high level of security and data integrity with its immutable distributed ledger technology. It facilitates P2P transactions, business scalability and programmability.

To sum up, blockchain enhances the efficiency, productivity, and profitability of enterprises. 

Blockchain has become a catalyst for businesses to stay ahead of the competitive curve.

Here, we will analyze the enterprise blockchain adoption trend and its features. Further, we will also understand the benefits of enterprise blockchain with its notable use cases.

Why There Is A Need For Enterprise Blockchain Adoption?

Entrepreneurs believe that blockchain will create real solutions for real world problems with long term value.

Businesses are institutions which function on trust, transparency, customer experience and profitability. Out of these profitability and customer experience are directly related to the efficiency and performance of the business.

In such a model, blockchain can prove to be quite useful with its decentralization features.

Reasons that encourage enterprise blockchain development are:

• Build a credible multiparty environment
• Establish trust between multiple parties as there are variations in systems, processes, data flows, and communication mode
• Make supply chain management more efficient
• Automate complex processes and reduce human errors 
• Cost-effective tech solutions to increase business efficiency
• Simply processes through transparent
• Reduce operational costs and increase efficiency
• Transform customer experience
• Increase business data security
• Enhance the privacy and facilitate P2P transactions

The Casper Labs and Zogby Analytics survey show that enterprise blockchain adoption among industries is positive. 87% of respondents said they are planning to invest in the blockchain.

• 42% of businesses are using enterprise blockchain solutions to enhance data security
• 40% companies are using blockchain to streamline and decentralize internal workflows
• 34% of entrepreneurs are implementing supply chain blockchain solutions
• 30% of enterprises are using blockchain for smart software development

Blockchain is gradually entering the enterprise landscape. Experts predict that the global market size for this distributed ledger technology will reach $23.3 billion by the end of 2023 growing at a CAGR of 80.9%. 

The Rise Of Private Blockchain

Enterprise blockchain is different from the blockchain used in cryptocurrency.

Cryptocurrency uses public blockchain while enterprises use private blockchain networks.

On a public blockchain network, you don’t need any authorization or permission to access data. 

On the other hand, a private blockchain network requires admin authorization to participate in its activities. These permissioned blockchains are specially designed for the internal use of organisations. 

Private blockchain offers institutions more control over the data. As an admin of the organisation, you will have to permit employees to access the data.

You can give authorization to employees to access specific data only. Moreover, you can even give permission to do specific tasks on the network. 

Therefore, everyone will not have access to all the sensitive business data. This will offer more data security and prevent data leaks.

According to a market survey, 40% – 60% of the enterprises that have deployed blockchain are using private blockchain networks.

Features Of Enterprise Blockchain

There are several features unique to enterprise blockchain that makes it perfect for enterprise use. Some of the notable features of enterprise blockchain are as follows.

Transparency & Trust

Enterprise blockchain decentralizes your business processes. It eliminates the role of intermediaries making the entire system more efficient and cost-effective.

Moreover, by creating a single point of truth, enterprise blockchain brings transparency to the business model. 

Therefore, enhanced transparency and a single point of truth establish trust among the involved parties in the business model.

Permissioned Access 

Enterprise blockchains are usually designed with a permissioned access system, which means that only authorized parties can participate in the network. This helps to ensure the security and privacy of sensitive data.

Scalability 

Enterprise blockchain solutions are designed to handle a large volume of transactions and data, which is important for businesses that need to process a high volume of information quickly.

Interoperability 

Enterprise blockchains can be designed to work seamlessly with other systems and technologies, which makes it easier to integrate them into existing business processes.

Smart Contracts 

Enterprise blockchains can be programmed with smart contracts, which are self-executing contracts that automatically enforce the terms of an agreement. This can help to streamline business processes and reduce the risk of errors and disputes.

Data Privacy 

Enterprise blockchains can be designed to ensure data privacy, which is particularly important for businesses that deal with sensitive or confidential information.

Overall, enterprise blockchain is designed to provide businesses with a secure, scalable, and efficient way to manage their data and processes.

Top 5 Enterprise Blockchain Use Cases

Banking and Finance

Financial firms are using blockchain to create a paperless, transparent, and user-centric working environment. The technology simplifies operational activities and facilitates real-time multi-party management of transactions across the globe. 

Blockchain provides speedy and accurate reporting through an automated decentralized mechanism, which ensures error-free transactions. It also accelerates the settlement process by enabling point-to-point fund transfers between individuals and firms without a central authority’s intervention. 

Moreover, blockchain offers more liquidity to customers and processes transactions at a lower cost. The permissioned access to blockchain data increases security and transparency, and it helps banks expand their netting. 

Blockchain technology is also used by financial institutes in issuing letters of guarantee during purchase contracts using smart contracts. 

One such example is HSBC, which uses the R3 blockchain platform as a digital vault to store digital assets for its global community, thereby lowering the custodial and storage service costs.

Real Estate

Blockchain technology is transforming the real estate sector by allowing smart contracts to tokenize real estate, making it tradable like virtual assets such as ether and bitcoin. 

The involvement of third-party agents like lawyers, banks, and brokers is eliminated, thereby making blockchain an economical option for real estate buyers and sellers. It ensures transparency by storing information accessible to all the permissioned participants. 

The tokenization of real estate assets has made the process of purchasing properties more convenient and economical, where people who cannot buy costly properties can own a percentage stake on the blockchain network. 

ATLANT is a real estate platform that uses blockchain technology to bring transparency to transactions. Landowners can tokenize their estates and liquidate them via token sales. The tokens can then be exchanged for fiat.

Supply Chain

The supply chain industry is rapidly adopting blockchain technology to enhance its working capacities by providing improved data visibility to participants across all the activities involved in the supply chain. 

The use of smart contract technology helps to face disruptions, and the contracts get activated when the decided conditions are met. 

Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) speeds up the process of supplier onboarding, records all the data of new vendors, and makes it accessible to all parties working on the network. 

It restrains manipulations or theft in payments, inventory, warehouse operations, deliveries, etc. Participants in the supply chain get access to the same data, which eventually helps to ensure uniformity and trust-building, keeping conflicts in check. 

Food and pharmaceutical firms are switching to blockchain for improved supply chain management and control. 

For example, Walmart uses blockchain to trace the supply chain of its pork products imported from China. 

DHL believes that blockchain helps maintain the supply chain logistics, and the transactions can be easily traced, authenticated, and controlled without third-party intrusions.

Education

Blockchain is used in the educational sector to enhance the level of education by offering transparency and incentivizing learning. It enables students to take control of their academic identities by giving them ownership of their personal information. 

Blockchain makes verifying the integrity of the credentials listed on a graduate’s resume easier, giving them greater control over what an employer can access. 

Higher education institutions can save time and money by streamlining the verification process using blockchain to award diplomas. Employers use the link to the digital copy of a candidate’s diploma accessible on the blockchain to verify its credibility. By verifying information, employers can select the best candidate for the job. 

It is more challenging for candidates to fake their academic credentials, thanks to the enhanced security of storing information on a blockchain. 

Gilgamesh is a popular knowledge-sharing portal that uses ETH smart contracts. In Gilgamesh, readers, students, and authors can connect and share their views on books. For their contribution, the platform offers them GIL tokens as incentives

Healthcare

In the field of life sciences and healthcare, where transparency, speed, immutability, traceability, and trust are crucial, blockchain can have a significant impact. 

Industry experts already recognize the potential of blockchain in various areas such as clinical collaboration, claim submission and adjudication, patient data management, informed consent, and patient-reported outcomes. 

Healthcare institutions are using blockchain to streamline EHR, drug supply chain management, medical staff credential verification and clinical experiments.

Conclusion

Enterprise blockchain use cases are already becoming a reality. The future of blockchain adoption in enterprises looks promising as more and more industries are actively developing scalable blockchain solutions.

It’s high time for businesses to realise the power and potential of blockchain. Enterprise blockchain development if applied with the right goals can help you achieve business excellence and success.