Bryant Nielson | June 9, 2023
Blockchain technology is becoming more mainstream in business IT strategies in multiple industries. For instance, the food giant Walmart has announced several projects involving blockchain technology. Walmart, in collaboration with IBM for blockchain digital implementation strategy, seeks to decrease food waste, and enhance contamination management, transparency, and security. Though blockchain is one of the critical priorities for an increasing number of businesses, there has still been experimentation going on regarding this technology. As the technology is advancing more towards live projects, it’s important to learn the blockchain digital implementation strategies before jumping into its adoption and implementation stage.
The Key Principles
To ensure that your blockchain business process is fruitful, be aware of the following principles:
- Open innovations are better
- A permissioned blockchain is not always private
- Transparent governance is the priority
- Common standards may lead to increased interoperability
- Privacy is mandatory
The Digital Implementation Strategy
Step-1: Determine the Best Application of Your Solution
The first question to ask is when and where the Blockchain is applicable. In reality, the blockchain may not make sense for every aspect of the business. Hence, determine the areas where you can best exploit this technology.
The next question is to determine the inventory use cases that can tackle business challenges. Here you need to determine the blockchain use cases that help to solve a specific business problem.
Another thing is to rank these use cases based on your business. For instance, if you are a manufacturer, your prime focus should be on traceability instead of revenue sharing or certification.
Use the following principles to do this ranking:
- Viability: Determine whether you can have a return for a use case.
- Functionality: Evaluate whether the use case can be delivered or not. Make sure your resources are aligned with the blockchain investment strategy.
- Desirability: Emphasize on the use cases that your customer demands. If you pay attention to unwanted solutions, you will not receive a proper response from the customers.
Step-2: A Proof of Concept
To be in perfect sync with the blockchain implementation strategy, re-evaluate the blockchain use cases chosen. In reality, you must take into account the challenges related to them. If there are many challenges, it is better to skip it. Go with only those use cases that come with more benefits and a smaller number of challenges.
Step-3: Post-Development Scaling
This step is typically used for giving the business a long-term blockchain implementation strategy. Once you determine your solution, you need to develop the blockchain implementation strategy to be used in the long term, or else you are going to fall behind your competition.
This is also a stage to develop governance and blockchain, operation models. Start developing the governance model and r operational models that can be scaled up with time. In reality, blockchain governance models play a prominent role in your blockchain digital implementation strategy – particularly for enterprises.
Then there will be a time for pilot testing for your blockchain solution in a live production setting. You can pilot your blockchain solutions in different live production environments. It leads to a consistent stream of revenue and would improve your business’s efficiency rates.
Integration with current legacy systems is another important consideration here. Here you need to integrate the blockchain solution with the business’s legacy systems. Here, the more you can offer a steady integration, the more value the solution would deliver. Moreover, it would also confirm that your product will efficiently work without any issues. So, it’s also a main point of the blockchain digital implementation strategy.
At the same time, it is important to industrialize the blockchain solution and enforce proper regulations. Regulations are important to secure the solution. Then also start industrializing. You’ll roll out the solution like an industrial product. Thus, your customers can use that solution with no significant changes and obtain readymade blockchain products at their expense.
The Key Takeaways
- As a part of the blockchain digital implementation strategy, businesses must look to design an interface that is user-friendly and easy to use.
- Businesses must ensure to have the right design by using rapid prototyping for supporting the changes expected in business processes due to blockchain adoption.
- Blockchain technology is made using DevOps principles as it lets the business move away swiftly from time0taking manual tasks and processes. This can bring a significant change in the digital work culture of the business, which is especially helpful during the time of the pandemic.
Businesses must be ready and willing to strategize the change management system after rolling out the blockchain digital implementation strategies. Change management is often a hectic process if the workforce is not ready for the changes. The effectiveness and success of blockchain implementation can only be achieved with a full user understanding and willingness.