The improved ability of businesses to collaborate is one of the less-spoken of effects of technology, but it affects almost every aspect of our interaction with companies.
It is increasingly rare for any business to be able to function effectively without having at its disposal a range of software and products (SAP) from other companies to do the various sub-tasks required to fulfill broader responsibilities.
Every time you deal with any company, you are by proxy dealing with a series of other companies. The combined effect is the delivery of the Scratch Map you just ordered. This business-to-business market (B2B) is huge, and is only getting bigger. The ecommerce B2B market by itself is expected to be worth $6.7 trillion by 2020, and it only accounts for 27% of the B2B market.
This throws into focus concerns around cybersecurity, especially with developing sectors like IoT. And the pace of innovation is fast enough for regulators to be further concerned about their ability to keep up.
Though this talk may seem to be back-office functions of little or no concern to consumers, consider that 76% of the world’s transaction revenue goes through systems like the aforementioned. This figure is comes from a recent white paper published by SophiaTX, who have decided not to watch this pitch go by.
The solution, they say, is blockchain. Accessing this information through a distributed ledger means that companies will be able to reliably and securely perform some basic tasks which one might’ve thought high-tech would have already solved.
We’re talking about the ability to send documents like invoices and quality inspections back and forth; collaboration in a shared project like warehouse, supplier and buyer being able to converge on a delivery time; and the ability for documentation to be tracked through a process, like a warantee passed from manufacturer, to buyer, to customer which might need extending or updating.
Jaroslav Kacina, Founder and CEO of SophiaTX, led a presentation on “Breakthrough Innovation with Blockchain” at the Unchained Conference held by Blockchain technology platform DECENT. More than 100 elite blockchain experts from around the world gathered in Hong Kong to discuss and explore this cutting-edge technology, and Kacina went into detail about bridging the gap between blockchain technology and business models.
Read More: Trust no one: the story of Blockchain and Bitcoin
The SophiaTX platform has already been passed it’s first test at a proof of concept launch in Zurich, showing a invoice created by one company in their system being securely and quickly passed to another company using a different system. The shared platform will allow various companies from across the world to use systems which connect to the same foundation and can therefore work together without having to directly integrate them.
The next step for the platform is a “Token Generation Event” (TGE) where 150 million tokens will be made available over the course of ten days, starting December 5. The event will allow supporters to invest in the project, and for you and I to get access to the SPHTX token before it’s let loose on Wall Street and Canary Wharf.