Competitive For Companies Information Technology †Free Samples

Question: Discuss About the Competitive Advantages for Companies Information Technology? Answer: Introduction In past years, wide amount of researches has been conducted on the impact of the Information Technology on supply chain performance and relationship. That issue had been discus by use of numerous perspective in the, supply chain(SANDERS, N.R, 2005), marketing(KIM, D et al., 2006), information system (RAI, A et al., 2006)and strategy literature (KIM, S.M and Mahoney, J.T, 2006). In business for performance of firm information technology play important role. With information technology supply chain become more resilient and robust because of providing information flow without undermining efficiency of supply chain. From past few years number of companies those are applying IT system in supply chain management has been increasing rapidly so as they can improves their performance in the global competitive market(BAYRAKTAR, E et al., 2009). Before 1980s flow of information between different functional areas of organization and between members partner of supply chain was based on paper writing. Paper based communication and transaction was slow process. In that period informations was overlooked as a critical competitive resource because value of supply of information to member of supply chain was not clear to the organizations. Capabilities of Information technology provided competitive positioning of initiative of business like implementation, cycle time reduction, implementing redesigned cross functional process. With increasing use of integrated information system and enabling technology, now it is possible for companies to create seamless supply chain link which connects suppliers to customer so as to elimination of poor performance of supplier, uncertain business environment and unpredictable demands of customer(BAYRAKTAR, E et al., 2009). Main objective of information technologies in supply chains management are (PHILP, Kaminsky et al., 2003). Providing information visibility and availability Enables single point of contacts to access data Allow decision based on the total supply chains informations Enable collaboration with partner Some evidence on that issue of future innovative scope of information technology in the supply chains management is still missing and there is need to perform conceptual framework so as to integrates different theoretical perspectives are lack in the literature. Extant literature has widely discussed about role and problem associated with information technology in the supply chains management. Possible innovations in field of IT in supply chain management have been discussed in these papers. Literature review Informational technologies in supply chain management enable the great opportunity, which ranges from the direct benefit of operational to strategic advantages. IT change structure of industries as well as rule of competitions in between industries. Information Technology is keys for supporting organizations to create strategic advantages by means of enabling the centralized a planning of strategic with day by day centralized operation. With use of Information Technology in the supply chains management supply chains became more markets oriented. Famous organization Cisco reported the saving of 500 million dollars by means of restricting its integrating processes and internal operation with customers and suppliers with help of web based tool (BERGER and Andrew, 2000). PG and Wal-Mart states their experience and demonstrate that how they sharing of information can utilize for mutual advantages. Wal-Mart share point of information about sale from its retails outlet with the PG and the other suppliers(ANDERSON et al., 1997). Celestica electronic manufacturing company had applied wed based Information Technology tool so they can regulate their global supply bases (SHORE, B, 2001). Information Technology helps Celestica so as to improve their responsiveness to their customer. This technology helped their customer Dell to maintain their deliveries promised to their end user. Challenge in implementation of IT in the supply chain management Companies those had implemented Information technology in the supply chains management faces change in internal culture that was the requirement of completely redesign supply chain. That was very difficult thing in well organized organization to re-condition the mindset of people that was prevailed from many years. Solution of this trouble which was followed by companies was to implement these changes by knowledgeable and strong leader who have capability to understand available tool for achievement of positive changes, as well as their specific roles in initiates and sustain these changes. Integration of new application with legacy and existing system also creates problems for organizations. Compatible system from perfect vendor facility is also a challenge for management to tackle while implementing information technology in supply chain management. Sharing of data with diverse stakeholder like customers and suppliers, mining and filtering generated data and finding business values of data are also important issues. Disconnection of an enterprise system can lead to create redundancy error of data and this trouble could leads to inefficiencies of business in means of profit or cost. Poor co ordinations between enterprise system lead to increased supply chain pressure, poor customer service and flawed production plan. Lack of shipments and schedules, visibility of order can leads to costly decision making process by administration of an organization. According to (MACLEOD, M, 1994), managers of supply chain rapidly want to automate every component of supply chains from the forecasting to the distributions. They also want to the link each and every elements of supply chain. Approx. every company in current scenario wants integrated solution so as they will be able to see entire the supply chains at single place. If they require to drill downs to the forecast then they should be capable to check demand history (combination of data came from inventory management, warehousing system and sales order processing). According to (OLDENBORGH, M, 1994), ability to reduces human intervention are yet oversee minutely flows of product and part along entire lengths of supply chains can helps in mean of dramatically in the cutting logistic cost and customers satisfaction boosting. For medium organizations in that time of economic recession that clarity in the global distributions remain restricted to the major multinational with the deep pocket and volume large enoughs for justification of hefty initial investments in Information technology that could lead to runs into the million of dollar. According to (TOWILL, D, 1997), To survive, lets alone wins, company should be part of the one/ more supply chain which producing worlds class performances. Hence from it we can conclude that companies have to work together and there is need to optimize compete pipeline by mean of establishing the seamless supply chain to maximum their market shares. This can be just achieve by means of support of holistic chain concept by use of which individual business performance can be radical and significantly improved. Information system and process manufacturer vendor are trying to the development of filter to sift the through barrage of the data from the process controls system to transfer very important information at the high level Information technology systems. Existing IT tools in supply chain management Electronic Data Interchange Bar scanner and coding Enterprise resources planning system Warehouse management system Transportations management system Inventories management system Innovative and new IT solutions for supply chain management Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Need of minimizing supply chain management cost results in the adoption of the radio frequency technology for tracking inventory within the supply chains to the item levels, thus reduces channel volumes and enhance planning and forecasting capability (D'AVANZO, R et al., 2004). Data transmitted provides location or identification informations, or specific about the products tagged, like color, price, purchase date etc.(EPIC, 2002) Software agents Software agents are software systems which have attribute of perception, autonomy and acting on behalves of users. Agent can behaves proactively or autonomously. Intelligence of software agent refer to performing task or action by using the relevant information gathered from different problems solving technique like reasoning, application and influencing specific knowledge(HAAG et al., 2006). Evaluation Managers of supply chains as well as manager of information technology or IT strategist can get potential benefits from these papers. According to previous research build up of successful partnership between companies and IT vendors is very difficult because of leakage of secrets of company. There are dangers of firm falling into the virtuality trap as described by (YAMIN, M and Sinkovics, R.R, 2006). Companies needs to exploits different level of electronic integrations, which is based on the system integration and data consistency so as to gains desired level of coordination, learning and control among their channels partner(TOWILL, D, 1997). It is very difficult for companies to not just only invest in Information technology infrastructure but also to attach it with others resources of organization in orders to establishing embedded in between standardize business process of supply chain and partners. All ITs capability in a company needs special attention to manage maintain effectively, through core techniques and skills. Companies should keep and develop their own cores IT skills in place of using from outsource to third part. Otherwise these are danger of the replication from competitor and loss of the competitive position as described by (MACLEOD, M, 1994). Finally, leveraging Information Technology capability to supports management of an internationals supply chain and achieve competitive advantages is contingent on external environment, culture, internal environments and other countries level environment. Just by development of appropriate and sufficient IT capability to fit externals environment Needs Company can be effectively leverages IT capability to reinforces the channel capabilities and process in the international market in the turn reaps desired benefit as described by (MELVILLE, N et al., 2004). Conclusion Industry trends like outsourcing, globalizing, time, pricing pressure and customizing to market have attracts enterprises to use effective and efficient supply chain management technology techniques, policies and practices. With increasing expectation of customers, companies are forced to focus on development of more and more on specific area to face current competition. If companies have to survive in current scenario with conventional supply management chain then they have to expand it beyond their boundaries to integrate every stake holder. Information tool is very useful in these areas because its quick and easy to access. These papers discuss important role of IT as enabler in the Supply Chains Management. An overview of present alignment of used IT tool like ERP, EDI, bar code, warehouse management are provided in these papers. Number of successful Information Technology implementation in Supply Chain Management like NASA, Intel etc. is described. Basic element of new age and emerging tool like radio frequency identification, software agent is also reviewed in these papers. Companies have to realize about that they should harness powers of the technology so as to collaborate with the business partner. More comparative and comprehensive case study of successful implementations of IT in the Supply Chains Management will be helpful for industries those are still struggling on that area. Future studies should be carry out to examine that how organizations deal with problems and failures associated with Information technology in Supply chain management. References ANDERSON, L DAVID, BRITT et al. 1997. The seven principles of Supply Chain Managment, Logistics Management. Supply Chain Management Review. BAYRAKTAR, E, M DEMIRBAG, Koh LENNY et al. 2009. A casual analysis of the impact of information systems and supply chain managment practices on operational performance: Evidence from amnufacturing SMEs in Turkey. Int. J. production Economics 122., pp.133-149. BERGER and ANDREW. 2000. Five steps to an eSynchronized Supply Chain. D'AVANZO, R, E STARR, and H LEWINSKI. 2004. Supply chain and the bottom line, a critical link. Outlook: Accenture., pp.39-45. EPIC. 2002. Radio frequency identification (RFID) systems. [online]. [Accessed 7 May 2017]. Available from World Wide Web: https://epic.org/privacy/rfid/ HAAG, STEPHEN, Amy PHILIPS, and Maeve CUMMINGS. 2006. Management Information systems for the information age. McGraw Hill College., pp.224-228. KIM, D, S.T CAVUSGIL, and R.J CALANTONE. 2006. 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Firm performance ompacts of digitally enable supply chain intergration capabilities. MIS Quarterly. 30(2), pp.225-46. SANDERS, N.R. 2005. IT alignment in supply chain relationaships: a study of suppliers benefits. Journal of Supply chain Managmeny. 41(2), pp.4-13. SHORE, B. 2001. Information sharing in global supply chains. Journal of Global Information Technology Management. 4(3), pp.27-46. TOWILL, D. 1997. The seamless supply chain- the predator's strategic advantage. International Journal of Technology Management. 12(1), pp.37-56. YAMIN, M and R.R SINKOVICS. 2006. Online internationalisation, psychic distance reduction and the virtuality trap. International Buisness Review. 15(4), pp.339-60.