Putting a Number on Anything - Tokenization and Enterprise Blockchain

Blockchain is, for better or worse, irrevocably associated with tokenization and cryptocurrency. Though blockchain technology existed long before Satoshi Nakamoto published the Bitcoin whitepaper, it owes much of its initial adoption and visibility to this use case. Many of the blockchain projects to emerge in recent years have been focused on tokenization, be it for fintech, securities, or as the basis of loyalty programs. In many cases, tokenization has served as the foundation or key feature of a business model, but its benefits can also be applied in more of a supportive role. The use of tokenomics as part of your enterprise blockchain can be very broad and expansive, but what many businesses have yet to realize is these functionalities also have more granular applications.

Internal vs External Tokenization

Most people treat tokens and cryptocurrency as a front-facing technology, made available to the public through token sales, airdrops, and other means. Whether it's a B2C product like CryptoKitties and its ilk of tokenized gaming assets, or a B2B offering like Dragons, the assumption is that tokenized assets are distributed outside of the organization that made them. This is the prevailing model for tokenization, and with good reason; opening your token to a global audience can help substantially with adoption and use of your blockchain solution.

You have no doubt seen countless examples of tokens being used outside of the organization that minted them, while internal tokenization has yet to catch up in usage. Though this use case is currently untapped and underrepresented, there are many benefits to being among the first to start implementing internal tokenization and introducing tokenized assets in your business or startup.

Tokenization, Human Resources, and Improving Employee Performance

One of the biggest challenges that come with transitioning from a startup or SME into a full-blown enterprise is the fact that business growth often complicates employee evaluation and administration. Staff management becomes more of a drain on assets, yet less efficient, as new hires are added, making it more difficult for human resources departments to do their job. Accountability, resource allocation, and tracking employee performance are common pain points in any industry, but thankfully they are also areas that tokenization can help address.

By creating tokens for internal use, you can streamline processes and promote transparency within your business. Blockchain and tokenization allow you to keep accurate records of task completion by awarding tokens for finished projects. The most direct benefit of this capability is having tangible proof that something was done by the party it was assigned to, in addition to the time at which a job was finished. This can be achieved by creating smart contracts set to distribute tokens, which trigger when a specific task is performed. Through blockchain’s immutable ledger functionalities, your organization can see a record of timestamped transactions, which serves as a sort of paper trail of each employee’s projects and when they were completed. By using tokenization to measure the assignments someone has finished, your organization can easily identify top performers based on the amount of tokens they’ve acquired and track your employees’ improvements over time.

Your Tokenized Blockchain Solution, Your Way

One of the biggest advantages of tokenization is its flexibility and the amount of customization it supports to fit your business needs. When implementing tokenization, you can create different types of tokens for different departments and assignment types, allowing for a more tailored experience. Each task can be set to award a different amount of tokens, which allows your organization to communicate its importance in concrete terms. This allows you to go beyond abstract labels like “urgent” or “high priority”, that are commonly seen in project management software, and actually assign a quantifiable number to denote the significance of a task.

Another possible area for personalization is the smart contracts you build into your solution. For teams that struggle with deadlines and are often submitting assignments late, your organization could implement a time-based smart contract on top of your tokenized rewards for completing tasks. Your organization could configure projects to distribute more tokens if they are completed on time and less tokens if they are completed past their deadline. If you notice that a team or employee starts to have noticeably less tokens than their peers, you know that there is an issue with timeliness and performance.

The Future of Blockchain as a Service and Tokenization

Using tokenization to enhance your existing project management systems is only one of the ways in which this technology can improve your business. So far, we have mainly addressed the advantages of a tokenized infrastructure from a business perspective, but there are many benefits it can bring to your staff as well. In future blogs, we will explore how tokens can form the basis of effective incentives and reward programs for employees, in addition to more tokenization use cases. If you are ready to discuss adding tokenization to your business, contact our sales team.