[8] 2002 e-business-strategies-for-virtual-organizations
[8] 2002 e-business-strategies-for-virtual-organizations
[8] 2002 e-business-strategies-for-virtual-organizations
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e-Business Strategies <strong>for</strong> Virtual Organizations<br />
Manufacturers need broad product lines to be competitive and<br />
meet a wide variety of buyer preferences. Yet you can’t stay in<br />
<strong>business</strong> by offering all products in unlimited quantity all the<br />
time. You have to develop complex <strong>strategies</strong> <strong>for</strong> guestimating<br />
which portions of the product line will sell over a given<br />
production horizon. All that translates into stockouts and<br />
backorders or, conversely, excess inventory <strong>for</strong> the supplier.<br />
As a result, buyers want to reduce their risk of getting a<br />
backorder or stockout. They would like to see detailed in<strong>for</strong>mation<br />
about inventory and production capacity (available to<br />
promise, capable to promise). Instead of ordering and waiting<br />
<strong>for</strong> order status in<strong>for</strong>mation, buyers would like real-time<br />
availability in<strong>for</strong>mation and the ability to reserve products by<br />
serial and bin number.<br />
10.3.4 Exchanges present and future<br />
To date, exchanges have at best served as a rough and ready<br />
communications mechanism <strong>for</strong> shipment status. Typically,<br />
exchanges send the order to the supplier and leave the<br />
fulfilment and settling process to the trading partners working<br />
offline. Most exchanges cannot verify inventory be<strong>for</strong>e the order<br />
because they cannot see the supplier’s back-end systems. And,<br />
of course, if suppliers post product listings on multiple<br />
exchanges without real-time inventory availability, they will end<br />
up selling products they haven’t produced, and compound the<br />
problems of backorders and stockouts.<br />
However, more advanced order management systems will<br />
accommodate the dynamic nature of web channels. All this isn’t<br />
simple and won’t happen overnight. Yes, companies have<br />
invested in supply chain software <strong>for</strong> years, but most of this has<br />
been inward looking and designed <strong>for</strong> internal planning and<br />
scheduling only. Today the Internet presents a plat<strong>for</strong>m <strong>for</strong><br />
interenterprise optimization and planning with some exciting<br />
opportunities. Over the past two years hundreds of e-hubs have<br />
begun operations and their processes are evolving rapidly.<br />
10.4 Customer orientation<br />
210<br />
The Internet and e-<strong>business</strong> technologies that are enabling our<br />
new organizational <strong>for</strong>ms are radically changing the relationship<br />
between supplier and customer. Customer relationship<br />
handling is seen to be a strong asset as it brings the benefits of<br />
improved service, choice, and convenience to the customer and