Untitled - Ministerstwo Rozwoju Regionalnego

uilding. The competitive advantage of VCI companies in the virtual market
will stem from providing services based on a high level of smoothly coordinated
operations within supply chain/network, since the biggest economic value lies
in the part of the supply chain/network covering the customer.
If we take a look at today's customer expectations regarding time and reliability
(quick and loss-free delivery, short order completion time, instant product
availability and cost information, order status reports in real time, prompt
reaction to order changes), we can assume that they can be satisfied only
through increased IT saturation of traditional services, which leads to the already
mentioned business model change. Among e-business orientated companies,
the share of IT driven activity is on a dynamic increase – starting with electronic
order, on-line payment, tracking of shipment and possible divergences
during order processing, confirmation of delivery, as well as tracking returns
and responding to complaints or generating reports. Since customer quality
service expectations are much higher than in the case of traditional services, it is
essential to secure customer's trust through high level of reliability, as well as
safety during the entire supply chain.
Another area requiring special attention from the VCI point of view is connected
with the process approach. As has already been demonstrated, in many
cases IT integration is associated with the actual linking of operator and customer
operating systems (e.g. when the software applies to the operations of
sales, financial or logistics team), since in order to achieve optimum benefit it is
necessary to connect and integrate respective processes. Such applications are
known as end-to-end (connection of front-end, applications - supplier relations
with back-end applications – customer relations). So far, relatively few companies
are equipped with applications covering order processing in its entirety. Among
the ones that are we can find UPS, FedEx, DHL, TNT, Amazon or Dell. It can
also be noticed that relatively many firms (over 25%) decide to outsource the
above applications, although the tendency has dropped in relation to the period
of 2000-2005. In my view, this is connected with the increasing significance of IT
(understood as a defined system and not just a tool) and the ensuing business
model change previously described. Increasingly often, IT systems do not function
separately, as tools only, but are closely integrated with processes. As a result,
they become company's core business, and there appears a growing interest
in having IT teams inside the company (as strategic resources). The method of
organizing these teams and their size are separate issues. It is possible that their
structure should change with outsourcing of certain basic tasks.
In the context of the above solutions, it is worth noting that information
technologies include both methods, as well as tools allowing for information interchange
- the fundamentals of IT. Consequently, the human factor in the approach
to these tools is of critical importance. Therefore, currently used IT systems
should be highly correlated to company management structures. Hence, it
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