Wendy Henry, managing director, Deloitte, USA, will give a presentation titled The future of blockchain in trade and logistics at next week’s Parcel+Post Expo Conference.
What is your presentation about?
My presentation will provide an overview and discuss the fundamentals of blockchain. It will explain how blockchain can simplify business operations and outline the future process enhancements for international shipping, as blockchain promises to help streamline business processes and reduce inefficiencies through greater process digitization, automation, traceability and transparency.
What is blockchain? How does it simplify business operations?
Blockchain is a distributed consensus ledger that is shared, thus creating a digital ledger of trusted transactions maintained among and across participants. In place of multiple independent and isolated ledgers, there is a single shared record of transactional data that is distributed across the participants. At a technical level, blockchain can serve as a foundational technology that can create new business models and help streamline existing ones.
How does blockchain affect the postal and parcel industry?
Similar to supply chain use cases, blockchain has the ability to connect participants in the international shipping ecosystem allowing stakeholders to improve customer service, deliver faster and have greater visibility into packages. Considering safety and security, blockchain can provide international customs agencies and foreign post offices to have an immutable and auditable ledger of parcel and transaction data across all participants, enabling for early identification of potentially dangerous packages. Additionally, blockchain has the capability to help streamline payment reconciliation across business partners and facilitate cross-border payments in a secure and immutable fashion.
How will blockchain affect the industry in the future?
We see blockchain affecting multiple areas of the parcel and logistics industry. Blockchain has the ability to streamline business processes and serve as a trusted link between participating stakeholders including carriers, distribution centers and post offices. Additionally, blockchain can serve as a foundational platform for other innovative capabilities such as IoT (Internet of Things) and AI (Artificial Intelligence)- allowing for efficiencies in areas such as passive package scanning, predictive fleet management, mail sorting and tracking. The common thread that unifies these use cases is the consortium factor: success is reliant on the ability of multiple parties to work together. Building a consortium within the postal and parcel industry requires multiple stakeholders along the value chain to rewrite their business models, be nimble, and embrace change.
See Wendy Henry, managing director, Deloitte, USA, on Thursday, October 3 at 9:20am in room 3. The full conference program can be found here.
