Streamlining Supply Chains and Achieving Social Progress with DLT Labs

As Japan pursues its policy of accelerating digital transformation for its economy and in society as a whole, blockchain technology is increasingly expected to play a key role in transforming business structures, alongside AI and IoT. While most people associate blockchain technology with cryptocurrencies, the technology has applications ranging far beyond finance. Blockchains effectively store all transaction histories into a single “chain” on a managed online network. They work like an open ledger, in which every transaction is permanently visible to everyone on that network. This makes all transactions highly transparent, easily traceable to all participants, and extremely difficult to falsify or tamper with, so blockchains can be applied to a wide range of industries facing challenges in sharing data reliably among all business parties.

Awareness around worker and product safety, data reliability, and considerations for the environment and human rights for products and services have skyrocketed, pushing companies to ensure transparency and credibility. However, products with complex supply chains face hurdles in managing quality and ensuring safety of materials or controls around the labor and manufacturing environment. By utilizing blockchain technology to control data flow within the supply chain, it is expected to streamline operations in many industries in Japan plagued by problems such as complex data management and cumbersome system updates, and revolutionize commercial flow management, with improved data transparency over traditional systems. In response to this, blockchain technology is receiving a boost from the Japanese government, which is encouraging domestic investment. One foreign company that has seized this commercial opportunity is DLT Labs, the world's number one leader in blockchain solutions for businesses.

DLT Labs is a Canada-based company headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, founded in 2017, currently with approximately 250 employees, which provides technology development and application implementation of blockchain solutions for industry. The company has since expanded its operations globally, with a sales office in Singapore, an R&D center in India, and operations in Africa.

The major turning point in DLT Labs’ development was its entry into the Japanese market in 2018. The company had a solid track record of providing blockchain solutions to major companies worldwide and was looking to address industry challenges in the world's third-largest economy, such as the growing need for better traceability, for transparency in procurement processes, and for tracking supply chain data for raw materials, food, and other products.

In Japan, paper-based manual processes can still be found in various workflows and have there is an increasing demand to automate processes. While some firms and municipalities remain cautious of current online services due to security issues, given the fact that blockchain technology will ensure the safety and reliability of digital data, DLT Labs' solutions are expected to further the digital transformation of Japan’s supply chains.

DL Asset Track, a distributed ledger package from DLT Labs, has provided several solutions including supply chain rectification. Users can visualize the flow of information, goods, and money to eliminate bottlenecks, and make the flow smoother for better business efficiency. On DL Asset Track, data cannot be deleted or changed without leaving a fully visible record of the change, and inputs are recorded as unalterable data to ensure reliability in all workflows. “With smart contracts on DL Asset Track, we really can digest a level of complexity with smart dynamic data,” says DLT Labs CCO Francis Lalonde. “It provides a level of depth that other folks do not have. Together with distributed ledgers, it creates a level of trust that whatever the outcome is, it is something we have both agreed upon.”

In addition, the flexible configurable nature of the software allows users to create their own workflows and smart contracts with no or little coding. This means that it saves time and effort, and at the same time ensures accuracy as there is virtually no additional work involved. Users can easily start within one small business group and then deploy across the entire enterprise, setting transaction prices based on business scope, transaction volume, and number of users, allowing them to start new projects with the goal of achieving substantial cost savings and efficiency gains.

Speaking about the company’s decision to expand into the Japan market, Mr. Lalonde said “Japan is a sophisticated economy with world-leading tech that we absolutely had to get into. Aside from the US, it is perhaps the number two market. Japan is very mature, technology-wise, and there is a strong understanding of the tech and its use there, which we do not see everywhere, so it just makes sense for us.” As international business becomes more commonplace and simultaneously more complex, working out agreements for managing logistics becomes a key priority for firms of all sizes, so the conditions seemed right for DLT Labs to enter the market.