Bab 9: Internet traders can increase profitability by reshaping their supply chains
Summary
The volume of Internet trading grew
significantly in the final years of the last century; it continued to grow in
the early years of this century and is forecast to grow even further in the
next few years. By 2006, Forester (2001b) forecasts that global online trade, a
combination of both business to business (B2B) and business to consumer (B2C)
sales.
Dissatisfaction in the mind of the customer can be created in a number of
ways:
1. Late delivery
2. damaged goods
3. poorly handled financial transactions and bad-tempered
delivery personnel are just a few.
The ordering process was slick, and customers, not unreasonably, expect the
rest of the process to be undertaken with the same efficiency.
Their
order fulfilment resources and systems, and the integration of those processes
and systems with those of their suppliers of goods and order-fulfilment
services, as they did to their customer-facing Web site.
The
delivery mechanisms in many organizations cannot cope, when Internet trading is
added to the traditional market offering, with the requirement for a large
number of small orders requiring, to all intents and purposes, instant shipping.
Internet
trading has enabled the introduction of improved supply chains:
- Recent supply chain
trends have reflected changes made possible by use of the Internet as a means
of communicating between buyers and sellers. The simple scenario described
above, relating to books, no longer requires a network or a supply chain
involving the printer/publisher, an intermediate stockholding location and an
organization to promote the offering, capture the order and execute the
delivery
Suppliers and buyers, particularly
in the automotive sector, have practised just-in-time techniques relying on
electronic communication for some time. They have developed and introduced
order-fulfilment techniques, reshaping the structure of the distribution networks
and supply chains, enabling minimal inventories to be maintained through
line-side delivery and rapid communication
