ABR recently had a chat with the Head of Asia Pacific of R3, Amit Ghosh on the ordeal of future technology getting into the bandwagon in society. This is part 1 out of the 3 feature series.

As an enterprise blockchain software firm working with a global ecosystem of more than 350 participants across multiple industries, R3 prides itself to have a global team of over 300 professionals in 14 countries with over 2,000 technology, financial, and legal experts drawn from its vibrant ecosystem. 

Flaws Within The Global Trade

Since the pandemic of covid-19 started to happen early this year, the world became paralysed for a short while. However, it is not a stopping point for everyone because the digitalisation world came into reality a decade ago. Despite the drastic and dramatic slowdown in international trade, governments across the world place significant restrictions on the commerce industry as a whole.

Notwithstanding the fact that global trade slows to a crawl, it further affected the trade of the finance industry and the global supply chain to be stagnant.

“Even before the current global health pandemic, international trade was notoriously complicated and often slowed down by the number of players involved (from buyers to sellers, through various middlemen, customs officials, transportation and logistics personnel, etc.) and the usually outdated means of exchanging information through the exchange of paperworks.” said Amit.

Nonetheless, the disruption of supply chain has prompted organisations to focus their efforts around track and trace solutions, many entities recognise the need for a streamlined and automated financial setups in the corporate sectors to ensure that businesses run efficiently.

Covid-19 Is A Capital Game

The pandemic has revealed that in order to de-risk supply chains, operating procedures, and business models is about increasing efficiency, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness in maintaining large scale operations remotely. 

“One example of the successful integration of blockchain into the supply chain is the Siam Cement Group (SCG), the largest and oldest cement and building material company in the Southeast Asia region.” added Amit.

SCG has been operating its own blockchain procurement platform for almost 2 years — for a secured, efficient process in the building materials supply chain. 

Moreover, boasting about $15.3 billion in 2018 revenue and thousands of partners worldwide, SCG’s Procure-to-Pay solution is currently used by 240 partners and ensures that data from throughout the procurement process is secured and immutable for easy auditing and analysis. This additionally allows for efficient invoice verification and a lower risk of fraud. 

Interestingly, it was built on R3’s Corda enterprise framework. Therefore, SCG’s blockchain solution has reduced the average procurement processing time for the company from 70 minutes to 35 minutes, simultaneously reducing costs by up to 70%.

Looking at a different example would be “letters-of-credit” (LoCs). These are issues by importers banks to exporters banks where LoCs serve as a guarantee for payments to the exporter so long as specific conditions are met. For instance cargos arriving on time, with no damage and sufficient materials and so forth. Traditionally, the process will take quite ample of days to complete the whole process, but this can be changed and improved by implementing the future technology into the industry.

Some examples would be in trade financing, supply chain, insurance, real estate, capital markets, payments and digital identity.

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About the author

Nurul Zamrè

Senior Content Writer

Nurul Zamrè is an ardent writer for the past 15 years of her living tenure on science & technology, agriculture, health, communities, management and more. She is also a News Anchor at RTM, a general manager of AHVN, a model, VO artist, emcee, gymnast, ballerina and a lover of everything chocolates.