Comparison of an Industry
To any industry, the challenge is clear: you must deliver unparalleled service and value to your customers. In industry, continuous change has become the norm and the challenge to management is to create a flexible and dynamic e-Business infrastructure that promises to accelerate speed-to-market, satisfy customers’ demands, and deliver profitable growth.
Comparison of an Industry
The evolution of e-Business has changed the way that companies in every industry must operate to achieve profitable growth. Over the past two decades, the dynamic industries have been forced to make dramatic changes to their business processes and strategy to cope with high growth, cost pressures, and changing customer demands. In the U.S. alone, the transportation industry is estimated to be a $600 billion venture. The competitive market is highly fragmented and, despite trends toward consolidation, one fact remains unchanged: competition will intensify and most companies will be forced to manage business with a new level of detail. They will have to examine emerging channels, identify customers’ changing demands, and leverage new technology at a speed that outpaces the competition. The search for new ways to grow profitably, differentiate service offerings, and exceed customer expectations has led many leading companies in the transportation and third party logistics spaces to embrace new and innovative technologies and solutions. Supporting these efforts, companies have initiated IT systems projects that have ranged from simple point solutions aimed at very specific areas and service offerings, to full-scale replacement of existing systems and the implementation of leading solutions, including solutions that transform existing service offerings into hosted environments. (I am making reference to SABRE system used by the transport industry, particularly airlines.)
It is necessary to have the power and intelligence to analyze and optimize business processes using new techniques and functionality that are the result of combining advanced supplier relationship, management and supply chain optimization software and solutions with the power of pricing and revenue optimization. With these powerful tools, businesses can exceed the expectations of their clients by helping them leverage their services to define the optimal balance between cost-of-goods sold, cost-of-service, and profitability.
E-Commerce can be defined as electronic market transactions and all aspects related to conducting those transactions. In the transportation industry as well as in non-service oriented industries, those transactions range from marketing, purchasing, planning, human resources, advertising, and even legal registration of copyrights and have in the last few years increased the agility and efficiency of transactions. This has been reported in most industries and in spite of the billions of business-to-business, customer-to-customer, and business-to-customer transactions each day, there are reports that contradict the benefits of e-Business.
Globalization of Markets
Companies are competing in a truly global marketplace. In contrast to the past where just a handful of multi-national corporations and some daring entrepreneurs offered their products and services globally. Today, corporations are outsourcing production, importing components, assembling in different locations, shipping knock-down kits, and developing new sales channels globally. The internet and its offer of universal and instant connectivity has accelerated the fusion of global [next page]