In its 2018 blockchain survey and subsequent report, Deloitte revealed that blockchain technology continues to gain traction at the executive level of enterprises across a variety of industries.

Most notably, the survey revealed the following: 95% of respondents will make an investment in blockchain technology next year $10 million or more: 16% $1-$10 million: 49% $1 or less: 30% no investment 5%

43% of respondents said blockchain was “Critical – in our top 5 strategic priorities”

39% said the biggest barrier was regulatory issues

84% said “Blockchain technology is broadly scalable and will eventually achieve mainstream adoption”

84% said blockchain is “more secure than systems built from more conventional information technologies”

1,053 executives from around the world interviewed

Deloitte, in its survey, interviewed over a thousand senior executives in seven countries:

Canada;

China;

France;

Germany;

Mexico;

U.K. and

The U.S.

The executives were from companies with $500 million or more in annual revenue.

According to its report, blockchain-savvy executives from digital enterprises were targeted in the research. The survey didn’t take into consideration startups since their business models have been inspired by blockchain at their inception.

Quick figures

Amongst the respondents, 74 percent of them stated that their executive team believes there is a compelling business case for use of the technology.

34 percent of the respondents revealed that their organizations are in the process of deploying some form of blockchain technology.

Furthermore, 41 percent of respondents noted that it is highly likely that their organizations will deploy a blockchain application within the next 12 months.

There are some that are very confident about the deployment of the technology in their organizations.

Roughly 40 percent of the execs reported that their firms will invest $5 million or more in the technology by next year.

Blockchain more of a business enabler than a technology

After collecting the results of the survey, Deloitte went further to interpret them. The firm noted that the research revealed some asymmetries and uncertainties regarding the current state of blockchain at a legacy enterprise level

The firm stated that:

Ultimately, [blockchain is] more of a business model enabler than a technology…for legacy organizations…we’re starting to see a change in approach toward blockchain. Executives in these organizations are moving away from the pure platform view of “What is it?…let’s find a use case” toward development of more sensible, pragmatic business ecosystem disruption.

Deloitte believes that some companies are yet to grasp the fact that blockchain represents a fundamental change to their business.

This is the reason why most of them (74 percent) see it as a compelling business case, with only 34 percent of the respondents actually working on its deployment.

The firm added that:

Adding to the uncertain state of blockchain adoption is the fact that while more than 41 percent of respondents say they expect their organizations to bring blockchain into production within the next year, 21 percent of global respondents—and 30 percent of US respondents—say they still lack a compelling application to justify its implementation.

According to the survey, some people still looking at blockchain as a residual platform has impeded innovation and adoption by some companies. However, regulatory concerns were the biggest factor affecting blockchain growth.

39 percent of respondents are skeptical about accelerating greater investment in the technology due to the regulatory concerns. Furthermore, difficulties in adapting legacy systems are responsible for another 37 percent.

Looking at its potential long-term, 84 percent of all respondents agreed that the blockchain technology is broadly scalable and is set to gain mainstream adoption.

In the oil & gas, food, tech/media/telecom, consumer products & manufacturing, and automotive industries, 80-87 percent of executives believe that they have an excellent or expert knowledge of the technology.

Deloitte believes that the only mistake that big companies are making right now regarding blockchain is that most of them are doing nothing. The auditing firm believes that adoption continues to get closer to its breakout moment every day.

A few weeks ago, Deloitte published another report on blockchain. The report was focused on the retail and consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry, and the firm concluded that the business that isn’t considering the possibilities of blockchain might fall behind.