Fulfillment: Get What's Yours
Goals listed on the boardroom whiteboard include one-stop shop, better than on-time delivery, order visibility, speed, and outsource non-core. Ultimately business is saying fulfillment matters. So let's make it better.
[From iSource Business, March 2001] Long gone are the days when the words "logistics," "fulfillment," "supply chain management" and "procurement" would invariably elicit yawns from the mouths of insouciant CEOs. Rather, supply chain enablement, fulfillment and e-procurement are now the business world's hottest topics of conversation.
These days, corporate boardrooms pulsate with talk of cost-savings, reduced cycle times and streamlined operations because of powerful e-fulfillment tools. e-Marketplace founders endlessly debate the advantages of IT platforms and Web-based portals. Not to mention the volumes spoken by the findings of today's leading research firms.
As an example, International Data Corporation forecasts that the Internet-based procurement applications market will grow from $187 million in 1998 to $8.5 billion by 2003. And, in a study released in late 1998, Forrester predicted that U.S. B2B e-commerce will increase from $43 billion in 1998 to $1.3 trillion in 2003, accounting for a whopping 9.4 percent of business sales.
Such promising statistics are helping to fill the coffers of today's B2B supply chain and e-procurement solution providers. But that's not to suggest, however, that key players can simply ride this latest wave of technological innovation to business success. After all, the e-procurement and supply chain market is becoming increasingly crowded, customer expectations run high and adoption issues have yet to be resolved.
And then there's the matter of the unprecedented pressure being placed on B2B trading partners (buyers and suppliers) to better manage and procure direct materials.
Says Tom Harwick, research director of supply chain management at AMR Research: "If you can improve your purchasing of direct materials, you have a bigger impact on your cost structure, you have a bigger impact on how quickly you can bring products to market, you have a bigger impact on how effectively you can design products. So, it has a big effect on your competitive position."
What is separating the trailblazers from the tech-challenged? The courage to become a one-stop-shop, the ability to provide order visibility, the realization that speed is strategy, the willingness to outsource
