Analysis of the Practical Application of Blockchain Technology in Business

The given paper focuses on explaining what blockchain technology is, the fundamentals of how it works, and applications of it. The actuality of the chosen topic can be confirmed by the fact that, for the last several years, starting from small, though a bold idea, the technology of blockchain developed up to a gigantic billion dollars industry. Blockchain technology changed not only the economic environment but also had defined innovative approaches to the company’s management. In order to understand, in what business spheres this technology has already penetrated or only begins to, the main goal was set – to analyze the current situation and determine the most successful areas of this technology’s application. For reaching this goal the following tasks were identified: on the basis of literature, publications and interviews of business representatives study the native and foreign introduction; to identify existing blockchain-solutions; by grouping blockchain applications into three distinct categories to analyze each of them via a SWOT-analysis. This paper is divided into two parts: theoretical and analytical. In the theoretical part the author considers the main concepts, terms, and definitions, which are actively used in analytical part, and also describes the way blockchain works. During this process a number of resources have been used: reports of such companies as Ernst & Young, PWC, Bain & Company, Accenture, scientific publications and books. The analytical part analyzes the existing blockchain solutions, identifies the main areas of application of blockchain technology. By studying the real business cases connected with blockchain was revealed how the technology is developing in the West and, in particular, in Russia. In the course of the work, the main generalizing categories of blockchain applications are also identified and SWOT analysis of each of them is carried out.