Have you often wondered what blockchain is really all about and how it applies
to business that's the topic of this video
so if blockchains a bit of a mystery to you today we're talking to an expert on
the topic so Stephen Rowlinson you're a very impressive CV and IT and
cryptocurrency and so on and Stephens been talking here at Supply Chain
Leaders Academy for the last hour and a half about blockchain so I thought
just grabbed him for five minutes and we'll share a couple of things that
maybe will help you understand it so the obvious question is what is blockchain
yeah good question well it's very very simple
Blockchain is a distributed ledger hmm it provides an immutable record of your
transactions which also can be makes your particular processes transparent
okay right now we rely on centralized databases that are siloed in each
organization imagine if you had a shared database between yourself and your other
parties and that that those records were immutable had available at any time for
you to look up and check and so by keeping a a single source of truth it's
now possible to be on the same page as everybody else so maybe you're
thinking what I'm thinking and what's the security of it all yes sure it's
'Cause it sits in the cloud, doesn't it? and a whole bunch of services yes anyone can establish
a node on the network and their particular go to there is to collect a
fee for providing being the verify or validator of those transact transactions
that are occurring they didn't have access to the data behind the
transaction okay it's encrypted so a lot of businesses are really embracing the
blockchain technology why what was the benefit to a business. Well, one of the
greatest benefits is that you can do away with those intermediaries mmm the
intermediaries that take a clip of your ticket. We charge you a fee
performing some activity one of the biggest costs to business is the bank's
I thought it might be the banks. Well it is
They of course you know traditionally providing a lending services but they also
involved in payments with blockchain technology it's possible to make those
payments directly from one one party to another without the involvement of third
parties such as banks for business it also means a reconciliation of those
transactions can be automated so a business document for example say an
invoice claim in this payment can be handled simultaneously so some people
might be thinking is blockchain and cryptocurrency is obviously you know
very closely linked to that this is all a flash in the pan or is it really the
way of the future because you know we saw Bitcoin values go up and down some
people are probably thinking you know is it here to stay or is it a bit of a fad well I think it
is here to stay I know that crypto currencies have been highly speculative
that usually occurs with any new technology that appears particularly in
finance we now see banks providing involving themselves in how to leverage
a blockchain for accross-the-border payments we see a number of projects and loyalty and in
advertising media a way of ensuring this transparency in a process it eliminates
the chances of fiddling the books I think that's an important factor ok but
no that was a fascinating session that you just ran I suppose for the people
watching this video it'd be really nice if we could share some more information
with them so I'll talk to Steven afterwards and see maybe there's a
website you have or something and I think your run training courses and yes
we did so we'll put some links down below if you really want to learn more
about it so before you go just remember if you enjoyed this video if you found a
value if you're not subscribed to hit the subscribe button if you want to make
them comments on blockchain or anything like that comment below or any other
particular topics that you'd like to hear about Thank You Steven and we'll
see you next week thank you Rob