The Use of Emerging Technology to Create Competitive Advantage Within the Business Environment

Supply chains must be managed to coordinate the inputs with the outputs in a firm to achieve the appropriate competitive priorities of the firm’s enterprise processes. The Internet offers firms an alternative to traditional methods for managing supply chains. A supply chain strategy is essential

It is quite challenging to discuss about procurement management without stating the importance of its strategies. There are four main basic procurement strategies that serve different functions within a procurement management. To begin with, a “Partnership” strategy focuses mainly on constructing mutual commitment in long term relationship with suppliers. While a “Secure Supply” strategy aims to secure short and long term supply while reducing risk from suppliers. In addition, a “Category Management and E-Procurement solutions” serves as a tool to reduce logistic complexity, improve operational efficiency, and attempts to reduce the number of suppliers. Lastly, a “Competive Bidding” strategy emphasizes on obtaining the “Best Deal” for short term transactions with suppliers.(van weele) Each of these four strategies involves a unique purchasing methodology, which implies that the complexity is embedded in an individual strategic implication. Therefore, it requires different tools to accomplish the specific strategical characteristics. A business entity may need to support and execute procurement decisions with other strategic apparatus with analytical methods, including market analysis, uncertainty analysis, price forecasting, supplier relationship and along with others.(Harvard)

E-procurement has had an increasingly important role in business-to-business(B2B) commerce. Web-enabled B2B e-commerce enhances inter-organizational coordination resulting in transaction cost savings and competitive sourcing opportunities for the buyer organization. E-business has radically altered the ways in which firms interact with their suppliers(Phillips 2003). Continued improvements in Internet technology connectivity provide an opportunity to make procurement for goods and services more transparent and efficient. Six forms of e-procurement applications

Technological up gradation: the organization must look for latest trends and technologies for manufacturing products and assimilate the modern technologies for making standardised products. The computer era has arrived and it is offering integrated platform for business processes so the recommendation is to have integrated system for better access and synchronization among different departments.

Supply Chain Management (SCM) aims at integrating all corporate activities to improve relationships at all levels (internal operations, supplier networks, and distribution channel) to meet the competitive edge and satisfy the customer. In order to build an effective and complete business process that supports SCM, information among all business partners need to be shared. Information sharing through the Internet reduces the gap for business-to-business (B2B) commerce by enabling seamless integration with enterprise processes among partner corporations.

Procurement is one of supply management’s most challenging responsibilities (Burt, 2010). Therefore relationship management is the key to procurement success (Zhang, 2011). The purchasing of services has the potential to turn into relationships with suppliers that tend to focus on trust instead of the transaction (Burt, 2010). With that in mind, procurement should focus on long-term supply sustainability rather than short-term cost-saving (Zhang, 2011). To nurture an organization’s supply base into a fully committed and fully supported external entity requires time, effort and a highly collaborated working relationship (Zhang, 2011). Effective communication within the relationship is indispensable for any procurement outsourcing strategy to prosper (Simchi, Kaminski, Simchi, 2008). Failing to establish and manage good relationships could cause irreversible and catastrophic damage to a procurement outsourcing strategy. One of the most common outsourcing relationship problems is that organizations tend to sit at opposite sides of the work-group table instead of next to each other (Vitasek, 2010). The application is that the two organizations are working against one another instead of work with each other to solve an

The Management Team from LIU C.W Post Consulting Group Inc would like to Thank the Executive Staff from Nature by Design for this opportunity to evaluate your current business growth needs and present a Business Technology Solution that will meet all current expansion demands and pain points while also protecting your current investments and managing a non-disruptive transition to a more efficient future state of business. After many discovery sessions and discussions with business owners Keri Yamaguchi and Stan Fenton we understand that your main goals are to automate and centralize business processes and enable scalability of your backend management systems while driving efficiency into these processes for greater

Electronic business (e-business), the use of Internet-based computing and communications to execute both front-end and back-end business processes – has emerge as a key enabler to drive supply chain integration. As an overarching business concept, e-business has received increasing attention from academics and practitioners alike. E-business solutions in general are seeking to enhance supply chain effectiveness and efficiency through the automation of business processes. The adoption of e-business can result in benefits such as higher transparency, reduced transaction, manufacturing and other cost, reduced

Supply chain management (SCM) is based on the philosophy that firms operating in a supply chain are oriented to the provision of goods and services for the ‘final customer’ (Lambert and Cooper, 2000) . The literature strongly suggests that that cohesive collaboration in the supply chain can provide important benefits such as added value, efficiencies and client satisfaction (Stock, Boyer and Harmon,

As the business rapidly expands to international market, the organisation strives to advance their technology to increase their services and productivity. New technologies were implemented to make employees work more efficient and new software to ensure work processes are user friendly, easily kept and retrieved.

While researching on line I came across an article that described the affect that the Internet is having on supply chains today. “E-enabled supply chain management is fast emerging as a core strategy that organizations worldwide are adopting for sustainable business advantage”. (4)

Change is constantly occurring. Businesses try to stay ahead of the change curve through strategic planning. This planning sets the tone through goals and objectives. Leveraging new technology can help with meeting those

University of Tampere, Finland {nicholas.mavengere, marko.makipaa, mikko.j.ruohonen}@uta.fi Abstract. The prevalent competitive business environment has forced companies to devise strategies to survive. Strategic agility is one such business imperative companies require in the dynamic environment. Strategic agility is comprised of strategic sensitivity, strategic response and collective capabilities. Moreover, companies are collaborating in order to gain competitive advantage. This led to formation of supply chain to work collectively in response to the environment pressures. In addition,

Many complex and more diverse decisions confront supply chain managers on a regular basis: what would be more efficient to manufacture in-house or to outsource; what new channels to implement that it would benefit their customers and suppliers, or how all new technologies, platforms, and practices have to be aligned to enable real-time supply chains. Current information technology reduced outsourcing transaction costs drastically, enabled companies to an increased supervision and control over offsite work, and outsourcing services can deliver faster and more convenient, but technology alone is not the solution. If a company decides to embrace changes in business processes and business culture, those changes can support a long way toward delivering a better product for less money. Complex sphere of activities in many countries is not relevant anymore because a massive number of activities outsourced became commonplace, a new normal.

Information Systems Supply Chain Management Table of Contents Section 1.0: Introduction: 5 Information systems: 5 Past: 5 Present: 6 Future: 6 Supply Chain Management: 6 Historical developments in supply chain management: 7 Figure: Historic developments in Supply Chain Management 7 Strategic Perspective: 8 Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP): 8 Application of Information system in supply chain management's context: 8 Just in Time Manufacturing: 8 Vendor Managed Inventories: 9 Figure: Traditional Supply Chain Vs VMI 9 RFIDs in Supply Chain Management: 10 Chart 1: Projected U.S. Retail Supply Chain Spending on RFID. 10 Section 2.0: Information System in Supply Chain Management: 10 Concept: 10 People: 11 Processes: 11 Applications: 11 Integration: 12 Feature: 12 Collaborative Supply Chain Management: 12 Figure: Performance evaluation of the optimized supply chains 13 Use of RFIDs in individual products: 13 Use of Information Systems enabled Supply Chain Management: Crisis Response: 14