Blockchain technology has been touted to modernize several different sectors over the past few years, such as payments, trading, and many others. Now a consortium led by IBM is hoping to unleash blockchain’s power to revolutionize supply chain management. 

Like many aspects of financial services, the supply chain — a term used to describe the movement and oversight of goods and services — has been rife with inefficiencies that cost businesses billions of dollars per year. According to IBM, by using a decentralized approach and an immutable audit trail built on blockchain, “the new network would eliminate manual time-consuming processes and help reduce the risk of fraud and errors.” 

Blockchain has often been touted as a kind of panacea to solve all the problems and iron out all the kinks of inefficiency for a multitude of industries. Whether it ultimately realizes those promises remains to be seen, but supply chain management sounds like one area where distributed ledger technology could indeed be a boon.