Transparency:
Since the blockchain is a public ledger (database), any person or business can make use of it to monitor the state of their data since the beginning of time that data was committed.
If we take OriginTrail as an example then supermarkets can track where their produce has come from. The different places that produce has travelled from the minute its data is initially committed to the blockchain. Supply chains can also do the same.
Security:
Due to incentives security becomes a great benefit to the blockchain as many nodes join the blockchain network to deliver consensus with other nodes part of the network. This leads to increased security as nodes acting in good faith to mine (commit) transactions to the blockchain are rewarded a fee/cost while those acting maliciously either lose money or gain no reward.
In the case of an outage it becomes possible for the blockchain to maintain high levels of security because then there will be less participants on the network to vote on whether upcoming transactions/data are truth or fraudulent. However, as soon as block rewards increase due to less participants they will normalise as many new participants join the network for consensus before malicious transactions/data are being committed to the blockchain. This, keeps the network highly secure, running at all times and consensus to remain truthful.
Improved traceability:
For any person or organisation that has governance of their own data, the blockchain will have all records of the data they would like to track since the beginning of time that data was committed. It is beneficial because it enables businesses such as supply chains and supermarkets to track where their ingredients come from. This becomes particularly important for consumers as they too can use the blockchain to trace where their products come from which results to transparency for the consumers and trust towards the brand and store they are purchasing from.
Most importantly, improved traceability leads to great accountability should any wrong doing or faulty products be distributed then these can be tracked using the blockchain to acknowledge the parties responsible.
Increased efficiency and speed
All data is digitalised on the blockchain and so there is no need for paper-based materials with any written information of what Person A, B or C has.
It can be inefficient to manually communicate with all these different parties about what the outcome of all different sets of data should be. It is instead much more efficient and reliable to use the blockchain since everyone has the same copies of the data and it is trust less since all parties involved do not have to question the data since the ledger keeps track of everything committed to it.
The communication is digitalised by the network and global consensus is reached in relation to the outcomes within seconds if not minutes. An example would be one where three different people owe each other money and require consistent information to know what each of them owes to one another.
Also, imagine where we have different banking systems that record transactions of each individual where they borrowed money from one another. It would be a headache to track and by using blockchain these separate external systems become embedded into this one global network where all these people can simply see what is or isnât owed, decided by the systems.
Reduced cost:
No centralized entity needs to charge you to make a transaction in the blockchain. You can have full ownership of your keys and ledger which means not paying additional fees for trading etc. You only deal directly with the blockchain and this is becoming an option people are using more and more often with the rise of Decentralised Exhanges such as UniSwap where I can get liquidity or provide liquidity to other people who leave their assets on the blockchain for people to exchange and keep for themselves.
Additionally, developmental costs can be saved since they no longer need to understand many different software packages. They only need to know the blockchain language to interact with their clients which can happen through a decentralised application (dApp).
(Please do correct me if my understanding was wrong anywhere)