Intelligent Value Chain Networks: Business Intelligence and Other ICT Tools and Technologies in Supply/Demand Chains

Abstract

All business sectors are witnessing the trend of increased global competition, which forces companies to improve their efficiency. Reduction of costs, improvement of operations, improvement of relationships with customers, suppliers, and partners, shortening of delivering times, streamlining and optimization of business (logistics) processes and operations always have been the main reasons for the adoption of new technologies. As a result of globalization and integration of different economies, and the formation of international global supply chains and clusters their importance has increased further. The use of new technologies undoubtedly contributes to improved efficiency of supply chain management. Supply chain management (SCM) focuses on the inter-organizational management of goods flows between independent companies in a supply chain, such as raw material suppliers, component manufacturers, finished product manufacturers, wholesalers, and retailers. The Global Supply Chain Forum (Lambert et.al., 1998) has defined supply chain management as the integration of key business processes from end users through original suppliers that provide products, services, and information that add value for customers and other stakeholders. This integrated approach to planning, control, and monitoring of product flows, from suppliers to end users, aims at improved customer service at reduced overall costs, and leads to the development of important relationships with logistics providers, suppliers, and customers in order to enhance information exchange and the coordination of business activities, which are the key advantages of an integrated supply chain. The coordination of management processes and activities in a supply chain requires efficient information exchange between companies involved in the supply chain. The processes involved in SCM extend far beyond the domain of one company or decisionmaker, so a collaborative system is essential to ensure that all interests are realized, sustained, and/or improved. As a result, collaboration among all participants in the value (supply and demand) chain is essential. To improve communication, data, information, and documents exchange between customers and suppliers, proper and effective information and communication technology (ICT) is a necessity. ICT is generally seen as supportive technology (a tool) to human activities or human performance of business actions. The proper use of ICT enables faster completion of tasks and activities, accelerates data preparation and transmission times, increases reaction speed www.intechopen.com Supply Chain Management -New Perspectives 582 to market needs, automates and thus lowers the costs of supervision and information processing, supports the decision-making processes, enables distributive operations enhancing efficiency, reduces data entry errors, improves the quality of customer service, reduces delivery times between the date of the order and availability, facilitates payments, and improves inventory management. Companies using advanced ICT are more capable of responding to a dynamic environment, and can reduce operation costs more easily. ICT technologies also constitute an essential aspect of the relationship with external partners in that they change the nature of the relations between companies by allowing for real-time exchange of information and documentation in electronic form. In the context of maximizing supply chain visibility and agility various IC technologies, techniques, systems, strategies, their use and benefits will be presented. A classification based on their characteristics (functional tools and technology, integrative technologies) and their way of use and purpose (organizational, inter-organizational, core business systems, decision support systems, mobile computing, e-business technologies, web-based technologies, SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) strategy, cloud computing, A 3 (Anytime, Anywhere Availability) strategy, social