Business Development and Innovation: Walmart's Blockchain Use

This report discusses business development and innovation, focusing on the impact of blockchain technology, particularly Walmart's use of Hyperledger. It contrasts traditional and modern business models, highlighting the advantages of blockchain in supply chain management, transparency, and product authentication. The report details how blockchain enhances customer satisfaction through improved product tracking and warranty management. It also explores the competitive advantages of IT, such as secure transactions and data encryption. The conclusion emphasizes blockchain's role in ensuring security and accurate documentation, making it a valuable asset for modern businesses. The appendix further discusses future applications of blockchain, including piracy prevention, smart contracts, identity theft protection, and government applications like digital voting, emphasizing its potential to revolutionize various industries. Desklib provides access to this and other solved assignments.

Running head: BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT AND INNOVATION
Business Development and Innovation
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author note:

1BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT AND INNOVATION
Table of Contents
Introduction:....................................................................................................................................2
Innovation and development in business:........................................................................................2
Existing situation of the industry:................................................................................................2
Traditional business model versus modern business model:.......................................................3
Influence of the technology on customer and industry:...............................................................4
Competitive advantages of IT:.....................................................................................................5
Conclusion:......................................................................................................................................5
Appendix:........................................................................................................................................6
References:......................................................................................................................................8

2BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT AND INNOVATION
Introduction:
Technologies have advanced world-wide and the business organisation has become
highly dependable upon them. Block-chain is one such technology that is in use nowadays in
different organisation. Block-chain technology was initially introduced for the transfer of the
crypto-currencies, like Bit coins and Ethereum (Akira, 2018). These are complex transactions
which remain unanimous and are very difficult to track. All the details of these transactions are
stored in the form of block which are in a chain. All the people involved in the transaction are
aware of the information in the block. These information are encrypted on the block permanently
and alteration is nearly impossible by an outsider. In the report, Walmart’s use of Block-chain
has been discussed along with how new technologies have improved the present day business
(Walch, 2015).
Innovation and development in business:
Existing situation of the industry:
Walmart which is formally known as the Wal-Mart Stores is a multinational company
based in America. They are famous for operating in all sorts of markets and department stores
which also includes groceries (Galvin, 2017). When Walmart was established, it has earned itself
a mere bad reputation of degraded quality product. Food borne disease outbreak in America
raised a high alert for the quality check of the food. In the year of 2018, E-coli disease spread all
over the country. When the outbreak occurred, it was essential to identify the source of the
disease and from where in the supply chain did it begin. Hyper-ledger Block-chain, by IBM, was
first implemented in China and was successful in the pork industry. Walmart decided to work on
them as well and after a lot of different opinions, Hyper-ledger technology was implemented.

3BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT AND INNOVATION
The result was immediate, the mango industry in United States of America, which needed seven
days’ time for the quality check from the beginning of where it is coming from, got their result
within 2.2 seconds. At present Walmart is capable of tracing the origin of more than twenty five
products world-wide from different suppliers using the Hyper-ledger technologies of Block-
chain. Now, Wal-Mart in collaboration with IBM has successfully set up IBM-Food-Trust which
in turn has helped in improvement in companies like Unilever and Nestle. Hence, Hyper-ledger
has improved the business of the Walmart.
Traditional business model versus modern business model:
Traditional marketing which is otherwise known as the “brick and mortar” business is the
oldest form of marketing which includes shops, shopkeepers, store houses and offices. The
databases were created manually to store data. Human error were inevitable in such business
model and the time consumption for a single process was very large. The traditional business
process has many advantages like these business does not make use of internet services, testing
of the product could be easily done and the marketing was more personalized. But all these
advantages were over shadowed with the disadvantages it have on the business (Das and Lall,
2016). For example, person intends to buy a television form a store, in traditional business he or
she has to go the store, check out the product. The process of transport is expensive. Moreover,
the company barely takes action when the item is damaged due to the customer handling.
Inefficiency is another issue faced by the companies. Posting an advertisement for certain
product in the traditional way is very expensive. Moreover the advertisement has to be relevant
enough so that customers gets an idea about the product. There are many other issues like,
damage in the supply chain cannot be acknowledge as none of the parties know where the
damage took place. In traditional business nothing was accounted for accurately.

4BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT AND INNOVATION
The block chain technology on other hand has everything recorded in the form of blocks
(Crosby et al., 2016). These are permanent as there is no ways to alter them. The information
stored in the block chain are protected with complex Hash Algorithms. These makes them
impenetrable by the hackers. Tracking the damage becomes easier in the block chain as every
stage of the progress has already been in the block. The supply chain management can be
attained with the usage of the Block chain. The usage of the Hyper-ledger technology of block
chain increases the level of transparency in the business (Todorova et al., 2018).
Quality assurance is one of the other advantage of the block chain technology. Nay sort
of irregularity in the supply chain can be identified and the origin can be determined within
seconds. Accounting details of the transaction is easier. There is barely any human error noticed
as the human intervention hardly occurs. Moreover, implementation of the complex algorithms
ensures the security of the transaction.
Influence of the technology on customer and industry:
Industry development is totally dependent upon how the customers are benefited from
them. The customer satisfaction are kept in the mind before implementation of technologies in to
the existing system. The Block-chain technology keeps track and records of every activity that is
taking place in the business, starting from the booking of an item till its delivery. Here are certain
advantages that the consumers have due to usage of block chain:
Authentication of the product: technological advancement has led to many forgery in the
business organisations as well. For every authentic product there is a fraud, counterfeit product
available. Thus, to ensure authentication, the consumers can track their items right from the
beginning. Hence, the authentication of the product is ensured. If any discrepancy occurs in the
product, reverse tracking can be perform to find the root.

5BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT AND INNOVATION
Visibility of the supply chain: Transparency of the brand can be ensured, as consumer has
all the necessary information of the product is available along with the real time tracking of the
goods while purchasing (Gupta, 2017).
Transparency of the product: The transparent business strategy of the Block-Chain
technology helps the customer to know the root of their product. Hence, the customers are
satisfied with the company’s business policies.
Management of Warranty: The block chain takes complete responsibilities to track the goods
with the offered warranty and till when the warranty is valid (Pilkington, 2016). Thus the
consumers are certain of the fact that their warranty coverage would not be wasted as everything
is accounted for by the company.
Competitive advantages of IT:
The advantages of the information technology on the business industry has no
boundaries. With the introduction of the Block-chain technology on the industry has opened
many ways where the competitive advancement can be achieved. Usage of the crypto-currency
has ignite the trend of secured transaction with the maximum encryption possible. This is not like
any other encryption which can be broken at any point of time with the advancement in the
hacking technology. These encryptions are secured with complex algorithm like SHA256 and
many more are complicated and cannot be altered (Hackius and Petersen, 2017). Thus potential
rival companies cannot decrypt them without creating record of the alteration.
Conclusion:
Block-chain is such a technology which digitally tracks every loops and transaction in a
business. From the beginning to the end, everything is accounted for and stored as a block. These

6BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT AND INNOVATION
blocks of information cannot be changed at any cost, not even by authorized employees of the
organisation. Thus considering block chain technology in the industry serves the purpose of the
security and accurate documentation of the transaction taking place within and outside the
industry.
Appendix:
Block chain is a technology that collects information of every activity occurring in a
business and storing g them in the form of blocks or information. These blocks are connected in
a manner such that every individual in the process of transaction are aware of the activities
taking place in the organisation. No other employees or personnel has be involved for separately
documenting the activities and updating them as well. Initially Block-chain was used for the
crypto currencies, later its usage over the other fields of the business were discovered and it was
indeed very successful (Narayanan et al., 2016). Another most important future aspect of the
Block-chain technology is the detection of theft in the industry. The Block chain technology can
be used in the entertainment media where piracy is prevalent. Any digital asset that is backed
with the Block-chain technology cannot be copied to another location or moved. Well known
websites cannot show its download links. Hence, unethical means of earning money by reusing
files can be prevented (Gencer et al., 2018).
Execution of contracts, Ethereum project built on the concept of self-executing contracts.
The digital records confirms the performance and the payment is done immediately, instead of
people discussing and ensuring performance of an individual (Cong and He, 2019).

7BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT AND INNOVATION
Block-chain can prevent identity theft. The digital identity can be kept in the Block-chain
record so that its access to the hacker is nearly impossible. Hence, identity theft can be prevented
for good.
The government has significant usage of Block-chain that can be implemented, especially
in the fields like tax and voting. The digital voting is often disrupted due to the actions of the
unethical people. This can improve the process of digital voting system as there is no way of
copying data for benefits without the knowledge of the other (Tapscott, and Tapscott, 2017).
Hence, implementation of the Block-chain technology acts as a catalyst in the industry and
enhances the operations of the business. This has many future scopes which when implemented
will result in betterment of the industrial services to its consumers along with benefits for the
organisation.

8BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT AND INNOVATION
References:
Akira, S., 2018. Ethereum-The Next Generation of Cryptocurrency: A Guide to the World of
Ethereum.
Cong, L.W. and He, Z., 2019. Blockchain disruption and smart contracts. The Review of
Financial Studies, 32(5), pp.1754-1797.
Crosby, M., Pattanayak, P., Verma, S. and Kalyanaraman, V., 2016. Blockchain technology:
Beyond bitcoin. Applied Innovation, 2(6-10), p.71.
Das, S. and Lall, G., 2016. Traditional marketing VS digital marketing: An
analysis. International journal of commerce and management research, 2(8), pp.5-11.
Galvin, D., 2017. Ibm and walmart: Blockchain for food safety. IBM & Walmart.
Gupta, S.S., 2017. Blockchain. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Hackius, N. and Petersen, M., 2017. Blockchain in logistics and supply chain: trick or treat?.
In Proceedings of the Hamburg International Conference of Logistics (HICL) (pp. 3-18).
epubli.
Narayanan, A., Bonneau, J., Felten, E., Miller, A. and Goldfeder, S., 2016. Bitcoin and
cryptocurrency technologies: a comprehensive introduction. Princeton University Press.
Todorova, M., Stoyanov, B., Szczypiorski, K. and Kordov, K., 2018. SHAH: hash function
based on irregularly decimated chaotic map. arXiv preprint arXiv:1808.01956.
Walch, A., 2015. The bitcoin blockchain as financial market infrastructure: A consideration of
operational risk. NYUJ Legis. & Pub. Pol'y, 18, p.837.

9BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT AND INNOVATION
Gencer, A.E., Basu, S., Eyal, I., Van Renesse, R. and Sirer, E.G., 2018. Decentralization in
bitcoin and ethereum networks. arXiv preprint arXiv:1801.03998.
Pilkington, M., 2016. 11 Blockchain technology: principles and applications. Research
handbook on digital transformations, 225.
Tapscott, D. and Tapscott, A., 2017. How blockchain will change organizations. MIT Sloan
Management Review, 58(2), p.10.