Accounting Disrupted

CHAPTER 3The Trouble with Finance

New business models continue to emerge as technology disrupts how, when, and where business is done. Our value … moves from ”expertise“ to one of ”agility“ and continuous reinvention.¹

—Andrew Harding, chief executive of Management Accounting for the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants

“Here's how donations work. You roll up your sleeve. A blood donation service takes the blood. They ship it under strict temperature requirements to a production site. They separate it into other products. And they take it to a hospital or blood bank. But then they lose visibility,” says Warren Tomlin (digital and innovation leader for EY Canada).² Canadian Blood Services wanted a better approach to get near real‐time visibility and traceability of blood products throughout the blood's journey. EY applied a blockchain solution to this: when a donation occurs, the unit is scanned and all the related blood data is put on the blockchain. As the products from that donation move through the supply network, they are scanned repeatedly with their location and status recorded on a single, unified platform. Tomlin says: “Every time we get an Internet of Things (IoT) update of the temperature, it's recorded on the blockchain. Every time we know where it is by GPS, that's recorded on the blockchain. If you think about blockchain and that chain of custody, we end up creating an improved audit trail for these products. A single visible one that ...