Why Blockchain can give a Winning Edge to Your Retail Business?

One of the revolutionary technologies ruling the world today is blockchain! Today, blockchain technology can find its applications across all industries as well as business operations. From telecommunications industry to automotive to retail, every industry is expiring the transformative effects of blockchain solutions.?

While the technology can benefit many industries, its rewards for the retail industry are impressive. If you’re a retailer, leveraging blockchain can help you drive effective organizational changes.?

Here, we will discuss the incredible benefits blockchain brings to the table for the retail industry.

Key Benefits of Blockchain for Retail

1. Improved Supply Chain Operations

Supply chains controlled by blockchain offer real-time information about the supply chain status. The technology may optimize the planning process as well as allow the retailer to take the right action before the supply arrives. Such a flexible supply chain management lowers the number of recalls, which in turn minimizes the loss that the retailer may face.

2. More secure payments

Nowadays, retailers and companies all over the world increasingly accept blockchain cryptocurrencies for transactions. Some of the big retailers that accept cryptocurrencies include Overstock, Starbucks, and Home Depot. Alongside, even Microsoft accepts cryptocurrency in return for their software services.

Nevertheless, the aim of introducing blockchain technology in retail payments is not restricted to providing consumers with another option when it comes to payment. Rather, what’s driving more and more retail businesses toward blockchain payment systems is the concept of more secure payments.?

3. Fast Vendor Dispute Resolution

In retail businesses, vendor disputes are commonplace, and their vulnerability for such disputes is usually quite high. Moreover, such disputes consume a lot of time, and during the course of this time, they may lead to huge losses for retailers.As a retail business owner, you would want to avoid these problems as much as possible. However, in case they occur, you would certainly want to resolve them in real-time so that you would not have to face any loss of trade.

Considering blockchain’s high traceability feature, you can effectively resolve vendor disputes, since you can easily access all the information about the issue. So, you can save lots of time in the case of conflicts with vendors as well as the issues can be resolved with credible information.? In such a way, you can prevent considerable losses in trade that may affect your business directly.?

4. Customer Data Management

The adoption of the California Privacy Rights Act in the U.S. and the General Data Protection Regulation in the E.U. have made it important more than ever to manage consumer data effectively. As businesses and organizations are collecting an ever increasing amount of consumer data, they must handle it responsibly.?

Blockchain enables decentralized identity (DID), in which an individual stores their private data outside organizational databases. With DID, the data and any links pointing to it, can be saved in the blockchain, enabling data and user identity verification whenever required. An individual owns and stores the DID rather than, for example, an email service provider.

Using a DID instead of an email ID lowers the chances of others tracking the web activity of a user, and creating the individual full picture by gathering and correlating information inputted in different sites.?

5. Better Payment Systems

Blockchain technology is known primarily for the alternative methods of payment it offers. Bitcoin is the most common digital currency.

Nevertheless, there are various alternative coins like Ethereum, Stellar, Litecoin etc. Blockchain system also enables retail businesses to make their own coins and share with their customers. Blockchain-driven currency allows customers to spend in a retailer’s store only, and not in their competitors’ stores.?

6. Traceability, Quality, and Transparency

Here lies one of the most important applications of blockchain technology. In this technology, you can trace back every step of production to its origins, resulting in a high degree of transparency control. For example, a retail business owner has a milk store that sells various types of milk products globally. In this case, the retailer can trace where a cow was born, which type of grass the cow was fed with, who is the producer of the glass bottle used to keep the milk, which company took the milk from the farm and supplied it to the retailer. The customer can also see this chain, which builds more trust among customers as well.?

?7. Smart Logistics

Retail businesses that take an omnichannel approach, selling through 3PL marketplaces or logistics systems, leverage blockchain technology for tracing where the goods are at any point of time, which they have sent to customers.

This helps them minimize the problem of unaddressed or lost items that they have sent, and know more quickly when they will receive a return shipment. Hence, they can prepare their warehouse effectively for any incoming items.??

?Wrapping Up

With such invaluable benefits of blockchain technology for the retail sector, it’s smart for retail businesses to hop on to the blockchain bandwagon, the sooner the better! The technology can truly facilitate seamless operations for your retail business and help you take your business to the next level.?

If you’re looking for direction on starting with blockchain technology, we will be happy to help you. aQb Solutions has a team of talented and well-experienced blockchain developers who can successfully handle simple to complex blockchain projects. To know more about our blockchain development services, get in touch with us today!?