Last year was the year of the blockchain proof of concept. This year, we’re kicking it up a notch with real steps toward blockchain implementations. For many, blockchain is still a grand idea. For the forward thinking, it is already a reality in production level systems. Implementing blockchain is not risky or unconventional – it’s pragmatic.

While the blockchain noise is echoing around land titles, secondary markets and how blockchain can reshape the industry end-to-end, the quiet movers are the least expected but the most practical adopters. Origination, servicing, compliance and audit all have the most to immediately gain from a properly architected blockchain solution, like Factom Harmony, given the pain points of long running transactions, increased regulatory and servicing compliance requirements and reviews and frequent audits. Our Factom Harmony suite enables immediate blockchain capabilities for any of your applications.

How many have spent hours assembling files for audits or compiling reports for compliance? Or worse, paying outside parties to do so over and over? Given the excessive working hours needed for such tasks, every loan can suck away hours of productivity needed elsewhere. Creating a blockchain-based audit log is necessary to streamline file and data preparation for compliance reviews and audits. The ability to quickly and definitively identify the information used to make critical decisions throughout the loan cycle is paramount to improving compliance and audit processes in the future and minimize your organization’s costs associated with file assembly, and inaccurate or unsatisfactory findings. The incorporation of blockchain in your existing solutions can save you time, significantly reduce errors, and preserve evidence of your decisions.

If blockchain can solve all these problems, then you could almost say it is magic. Don’t be fooled, however, blockchain is not a quick fix or a one stop shop solution. Blockchain will not do your work for you nor will it take away compliance officers’ jobs or make auditors irrelevant. In the long term, if anything keeps blockchain technology from reaching its full adoption and potential, it’s that people are using it as a catch-all or one-stop solution. Blockchain is most practical for ensuring the historical verification of documents and data over time, serving as an authoritative record, not just a data set.

So who should implement this technology? Any organization or application provider that compiles data or documents subject to compliance reviews and/or audits. Create early value by implementing Factom Harmony API’s into your system. What makes Factom Harmony a game changer? It reduces the time and resource requirements to prepare for and perform reviews and audits. Using Harmony, blockchain capabilities can be implemented easily and seamlessly into existing business applications via simple integrations. You don’t need a consortium to use blockchain to achieve your organizations’ objectives. Consider Factom Harmony as any other existing software you may use, as an value add. When reviews or audits are conducted, your company will now be able to provide evidence of exactly what, why and how business process decisions and conclusions were made. Committing this information to Factom Harmony can save you time, money and valuable resources that could be more efficiently spent elsewhere.

Find out more about Factom Harmony and the Factom blockchain at factom.com.