Research in Supply Chain Management as part of the e-business

Abstract

The rapid development of information technology (IT), especially web-based information transfer between companies, their suppliers, their customers, and various service providers, has improved information management in supply chains (Johnson and Whang, 2002). Additionally, companies are increasingly dependent on collaborative business processes where effective information sharing is an important success criterion (McLaren et al., 2002). It is thus clear that IT and the emerging e-business applications and related new business models are gaining a pivotal role in managing supply chains (Brynjolfsson and Kahni, 2000) as firms are able to demonstrate reduced costs and increased responsiveness of their supply chains through e-business investments (Chopra and Mendil, 2001; Dagenais and Gautschi, 2002; Lee, 2000). Despite the initial enthusiastic expectations and some success stories, it is still not completely clear how relevant these technologies are for different companies and for different business situations and what actual benefits can be obtained and how.

Furthermore, it has been reported that supply-chain collaboration has proved difficult to implement in practice as there has been an over-reliance on technology and a failure to understand what information needs to be shared and, especially, how the business processes need to be changed when new technology is implemented (Barrat, 2004).

Therefore, understanding the value of e-business to supply chain management (SCM) is a vitally important issue in today¿s technology-intensive world. More knowledge of the impacts of e-business is needed to be able to capture the full potential of these emerging technologies and business processes (McLaren et al., 2004). However, the close relationship of the two concepts, SCM and e-business, make it hard to assess what type of impact e-business has on SCM. Some demonstrate instant payoff, which can be traced directly to the profitability of the organization. Others are more complicated, having a lag between the investment and expected payoff. Furthermore, empirical evidence of the actual benefits of IT and e-business in SCM is less clear (Cagliano et al., 2003; Wu et al., 2003).

It is thus challenging to capture interactions between IT and the business environment and consequently provide a basis from which to evaluate the value of e-business to supply chain management. We need an understanding of the phenomenon for theory building and theory testing; practitioners require it for improving organizational processes. We need to improve our understanding of ways of capturing the potential of e-business in supply chain management.

So far, however, we are still in the first stages of increasing the recognition of the potential of e-business, many organisations still lack an effective ICT infrastructure, which may organise, support and facilitate the highly complex and often rapidly changing interfaces among the organisational entities and disciplines involved in business processes. It is important to note, however, that organisation embarking on an e-business initiative have to consider a sensible alignment of technology (as an enabler) with their business strategy in order to be successful. The introduction of e-business might serve to enforce necessary changes in organisational structures and processes.

e-Business can drive new organisational forms (such as a virtual organisations), fulfil certain tasks in the inter-firm context and allow firms to improve supply chain processes. Therefore, e-business has a vital role to play in integrated SCM.