Internet traders can increase profitability by reshaping their supply chains

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