International Workshop on Successful Strategies in Supply Chain Management Sample Template Paper

Table 2. Perceived benefits of blockchain to supply chain 
Benefits of Blockchain to 
supply chain 
Explanation 
Improves visibility
 Reduces the need for double-checking and guesswork 
 Allows the automation of data analysis activities (e.g. demand forecasting, 
asset monitoring, optimisation and lean improvements) 
 Allows the development of services such as track-and-trace 
 Crucial for implementation in cold chain, luxury items supply chain, to 
provide provenance and proof checking
 Information visibility improves internal business processes whilst adds 
value to the service/product for end customers 
Allows for operational 
improvements
 Increased volume and accuracy of data helps organisations monitor and 
evaluate their performances better 
 Opportunities to spot issues before they occur 
 Speeds up the end-to-end supply chain execution
Ensures secure 
recordkeeping 
 One central data pool and system which is available to all stakeholders, 
and does not vary from one version to another 
 Improvement of transparency as all data are accessible by network 
members
Provides good quality, 
consistent and temper-
resistant data record and 
streams data flow
 The utilisation of one system optimises operations in the entire chain as 
there are no data conversions needed.
 Standard can be set, increasing the overall quality of data in the entire 
chain
 Highly secure system behind blockchain as demonstrated in bitcoin
Due to the infancy nature of blockchain, there is a high degree of scepticism among our 
interviewees regarding the adoption of blockchain in supply chain (Table 3). A lack of 
understanding of its technicalities contributes to this scepticism and low level of confidence: 
“In our organisation there are very few people who understand it. I don’t, I have heard about 
its application. … The fact that I don’t understand it entirely, of course means that I don’t 
really trust it (Interviewee B)”. As it is still not clear where blockchain brings value to the 
LSC sector, some interviewees question how necessary blockchain is to the industry 
“Sometimes, people spend the huge amount of money, time, thinking (to deploy the 
technology), and when it gets down to it, we realise we don't really need it(Interviewee A).” 
Supply chains tend to involve multiple stakeholders and it is challenging to convince them to 
share data and participate in a blockchain - which further compound the complexities of its 
adoption. Some supply chain experts claim that the transparency of public distributed ledgers 
clashes with the supply chain objective of information privacy-based competitive edge, hence 
they see information sharing is a big hurdle. Others see the compatibility with other IT 
systems and interoperability between different blockchain as challenging: “Putting blockchain 
in the country, not only for our company but the whole supply chain, you can imagine that the 
our WMS would be on board, SAP systems would be on board, Oracle would be on board, the 
banking system would be on blockchain as well, electronic payment will be active in real time, 

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so you can imagine the additional bandwidth that is required to be added to existing IT 
capacity and I can guarantee that would be the most challenging part of blockchain. 
(Interviewee E)”
Cost of implementing blockchain is perceived as another barrier “The small companies would 
be weeded out due to lack of sufficient funds while bigger companies may have ability to 
develop and maintain the technology but gaining profits from it will be in the long term, hence 
a low ROI (Interviewee L).” However, some disagrees and argues that small companies such 
as small 3PLs are more agile thus could be more adaptable to the technology; “The small ones, 
the start-up companies, they see it as an advantage and they could be the one to adopt quickly. 
We see new comers such as XX and other, they are the innovators. … They could adopt a 
Blockchain as a service model (Interviewee H)”. As there is no central authority in a 
distributed system, concerns were also raised about issues such as how to resolve a dispute. 
Security concern was also identified, given the cases observed in practise such as the 
NiceHash case (Nearly $64m in bitcoin has been stolen by hackers who broke into Slovenian-
based bitcoin mining marketplace NiceHash in 2017). Some IT experts suggest that during 
initial implementation attempts, organisations should deploy a permissioned, private version 
of the blockchain. They further point out that there is a need to solve the data input problem as 
information contained within the blockchain would only be as accurate as the incoming raw 
data.