Whenever we Google anything, there are few most commonly searched terms that grab our eyeball, they are nothing else but blockchain technology, AI, ML, big data, small businesses and startups / small businesses. Ever wondered how can your small business harness the power of blockchain and big data to churn out better and bigger profits? Well, here you go!
Blockchain for business process
With the evolution of technology and new inventions blossoming every day, various business use various technologies to accomplish business operations faster. These technologies include internet of things (IoT), the blockchain, artificial intelligence (AI), virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), etc. Blockchain business process management has been revolutionizing small businesses in the way they store data and manage their customer queries.
According to Information Age, a 30% rise is expected regarding data storage in data centres using technologies such as blockchain and artificial intelligence by the year 2021.
Traditionally, network systems and software built focused only on accomplishing specific tasks with respect to the purpose they were built. Traditionally, systems were limited to the arrangement of data, which were mostly unstructured and had restrictions on accessibility. With blockchain, such issues are eliminated and every small business today has the ability to incorporate this new technology right from their first step and enhance their interoperability.
Blockchain and data management for small businesses
Blockchain and big data provide small business with the means to have better storage
One of the major challenges faced by all small businesses is regarding the storage and unstructured data arrangement. Small businesses initially might not have a large quantity of data to store but still, they are involved with various transactions during their growth and development stage. These transactions include money transfers, material procurement, logistics, etc. Traditionally, all data and information of these transactions were stored as paper documents or segregated between different servers to avoid computational load.
With blockchain and big data, such issues are eliminated. Blockchain works as a decentralized platform and with big data serves such as cloud servers provided by amazon, small businesses are benefited. These benefits include storing information in a serverless farm and also data arrangement is structured even though data are spread over the decentralized network.
Enhanced transparency provides authenticity and cultivates trust
Blockchain stores data in the form of blocks that is highly encrypted and each block of data has a unique key which can be accessed only by the user of that particular key. These data can be accessed by other parties only if the user share their unique key. Blockchain also provides access to all the parties involved within a particular transaction without any restriction in accessibility to data and information.
With big data, small businesses are able to store information in real-time and also access them in real-time anywhere, anytime. This allows small businesses to make smarter and efficient decisions based on any current customer trend. For example, using blockchain and real-time access provided big data, a small business can better understand customer behavior on their products purchases.
Enhanced data cross reference provides intelligent data
Traditionally, data and information of any operation handled by a small business used to be spread across different departments and stored in different methods too. Some departments used to store data and information using network systems, some departments used to store as paper documentation. In such circumstances verification of data was hard and difficult.
With blockchain and big data, today all data and information even though they are spread across different departments, they are stored over a single platform. With blockchain and big data, all information and data are considered to be located at a single stop. Also, all these data and information are stored in a structured manner as an eLogbook. Thus, different data can be cross verified to find out patterns of actions and their consequences to make smarter decisions.
Stronger infrastructure allow small business to operate faster
Big data systems operate faster than other than a traditional server system. Along with the new technological neural networks, data and information can be stored in huge volumes. There is no need to worry about the system load or computation load a system requires in order to manage huge volumes of data.
With blockchain, big data is able to provide small businesses with a more secure channel to transfer and transact funds or data and information. This in turn also creates opportunities for the small business to innovate and provide a competitive advantage.
Real life examples of small business benefiting from blockchain and big data
Storj: provides effective end to end solutions for storage
Storj is a company that has effectively integrated blockchain with big data. They provide cloud storage that operates over a decentralized network. Thus they are able to distribute data across the network without any network error or delay. This makes the storage a lot faster and safer making sure that the cost of storage is 90% lower than Amazon web services (AWS).
Sia: eliminates a single point of system failure
It is a software that integrates blockchain and big data in order to arrange data in a structure, sort them according to their relevance and finally segregating them into respective relevant segments. It also distributes these segments among the entire network. Thus, the chances of system failure to occur is very low as even if one segment fails, various other segments in the network will still be functioning. Say goodbye to a single point of system failure.
Signing Off: adopting blockchain and big data is the smart decision
Big data is today’s trend and blockchain is tomorrow’s trend. When both of them are integrated, small businesses will be the trend of today and tomorrow. Small businesses will even be able to compete with big giants when these trending technologies are used to enhance their operations and transactions. When small businesses embrace blockchain technology and big data, they are able to strategize and make efficient decisions faster than ever before. What are you waiting for? Good luck.
