Highlights:

  • Ethereum, the second largest blockchain by market capitalization behind Bitcoin, powers the contract management solution.
  • Businesses can use a standardized application programming interface to integrate EY OCM with their current enterprise systems.

Global professional service, Ernst & Young Global Ltd. launches EY OpsChain Contract Manager. This blockchain-based solution will assist companies in running intricate business agreements and save on costs while managing security.

The solution introduced at the company’s yearly EY Global Blockchain Summit is built on distributed ledger blockchain technology. It enables several parties to use smart contracts to enforce important terms and synchronize data amongst various business partners. Standardized pricing, bulk discounts, rebates, and strike prices are some of these terms.

Ethereum, the second largest blockchain by market capitalization behind Bitcoin, powers the contract management solution. With the help of its decentralized technology, it offers a safe and auditable contract settlement environment. Zero-knowledge proofs, a cryptographic mechanism that enables one person to demonstrate knowledge about a piece of data without disclosing the data itself, are how EY claims to secure privacy for enterprises.

EY global blockchain leader Paul Brody said, “We’ve identified from past client work that contract automation can improve accuracy while cutting cycle times by more than 90%, and overall contract administration costs by nearly 40%. With our zero-knowledge privacy technology, we have industrialized this capability, and we can now get these benefits at a fraction of the up-front cost.”

According to EY, utilizing Ethereum’s decentralized public blockchain reduces the risk of providing buyers or sellers with a competitive advantage. It does away with the need to incur significant expenses for establishing and maintaining a private network for transaction tracking and auditing. Without partners having to go through a ton of paperwork before, during, or after a transaction, the smart contracts that carry out and settle agreed-upon rebates and prices also preserve the value of the business agreements. According to industry research, the global smart contract industry is expected to reach USD one billion by 2030, up from USD 1,750 million in 2022.

“Deploying on a public blockchain is not only cheaper but also much more scalable, helping enable many-to-many integrations on an open platform with no one company having an unfair advantage by controlling the network,” stated Brody.

Businesses can use a standardized application programming interface to integrate EY OCM with their current enterprise systems. It’s made to work with various external systems, such as Internet of Things gadgets and customer relationship management systems.

The system supports most business contract types, such as volume purchase agreements, volume discounts, rebates, and price models that follow market dataflows.

It also has real-time monitoring that automatically checks contract terms for policy conformity. Contract parties receive immediate warnings on differences to ensure that transactions that don’t adhere to the contract’s requirements don’t proceed.