How does Internet help to transform and shape today’s companies in this information era? The answer is “ebusiness”. E-business infrastructure is an information tool for optimizing the entire business management and operation processes. Competition in the 21st century will be across supply chains, not individual companies. A supply chain is a network of facilities and distribution options for the entire network of companies to work together to design, produce, deliver, and service products. Since its inception about 10 years ago, the field of supply chain management has become tremendously important to companies in an increasingly competitive global marketplace. Companies focused primarily on manufacturing cost (C) before 70’s, quality (Q) improvements in 70’s, product delivery time (T) in 80’s, services (S) in earlier 90’s, and environmental (E) compatibility in late 90’s within their bounded walls; now their efforts extend beyond those walls to encompass the entire supply chain efficiently and intelligently in a knowledge-based (K) economy of this Millennium. E-commerce does not just mean trading and shopping on the Internet. It means business efficiency at all operation levels. Executives know it is critical to effective business operations, but until now quantifiable performance measures have been as scarce as the number of corporate executives of China who heard of the phrase "supply chain management" (SCM). Supply Chain Management means coordinating, scheduling and controlling procurement, production, inventories and deliveries of products and services to customers. The SCM is the backbone of Ecommerce, a very critical component of E-commerce. Supply Chain Efficiency means having the right product at the right place at the right time, can save money/reduce costs, and can enhance cash utilization. So, in this paper , I am highlighting , the impact of e-commerce in supply chain management in the following area…
• Integrated, automatic system-to-system interaction with all trading partners
•The ability to integrate those interactions seamlessly with your in-house applications and processes to provide true end-to-end visibility and control
•Accommodation of the individual nuances of each partner's mode of interaction
• A high-quality and reliable means of exchanging messages over the Internet, which provides business-level guarantees of delivery and integrity
•Intelligent management of those interactions, allowing control and ability to change them dynamically
• The ability to adapt to change, by quickly and easily locating new services or partners, learning their specific capabilities, and forming a rapid "electronic
bond" with them.
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