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

Abstract

IntroductionAll 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.comSupply 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 networks, and others) will be designed and explained.One of the strategic and most important goals of every business subject is timely and accurate decision-making.Right decisions depend on the availability of timely and accurate information and reporting environments.We have to cope with vast amounts of business data (from disparate operating systems and applications), rapidly changing customer needs and market conditions, but also with vast amounts of hidden information (documents, e-mails, know-how, voice records, external sources, etc.).Therefore, in order to create an intelligent value chain network, it is essential to integrate our core business information system with a set of modern analytical and artificial intelligence tools that enable the extraction of relevant knowledge from all of these sources, management of uncertainty, and creation of business intelligence as our main competitive advantage.In present chapter also the concept of business intelligence and business intelligence tools (scorecards, dashboard, analysis, OLAP tools, data marts or data warehouses, data mining, knowledge discovery and other), some artificial intelligence tools and technologies (expert systems, artificial neural networks, fuzzy logic, voice-based technology, robotics, etc.), and their use in SCM will be discussed.Therefore, the scope of the chapter is the presentation of the most popular and the most frequently used examples of the broad range of information and communication technologies, techniques, strategies, software applications, and systems, and their possible uses as support to effective, accurate, and real time management of large amounts of business data, acquisition of information from these data, and data and information exchange among business partners involved in the supply/demand chain, operations like queries, reports, analyses, forecasts, and data mining which enable users to identify and analyze ongoing business trends and patterns (Shobrys, 2003) as well as provide support to decision-making, and other techniques and technologies that represent "added value" to the business.In addition to the presentation of each of these ICT tools, their use and role in advanced value (supply/demand) chain management and benefits are discussed. Information technology in the supply chain The purpose and benefits of information technologyInformation communication technology (Vatovec Krmac, 2007) includes the application of hardware, software and networks to enhance information flow and facilitate the decisions- www.intechopen.comIntelligent Value Chain Networks: Business Intelligence and Other ICT Tools and Technologies in Supply/Demand Chains 583 making.It is one of the few aspects of supply chain that simultaneously offers both improved performance and lower cost.It enables companies to maintain key information in an accessible format, process requirements, and make operational and planning decisions.The adoption and successful implementation of important hardware, software and network technology is a prerequisite for supply chain success.The supply chain information capability that facilitates a seamless flow of information is a very important element in further enhancing the efficiency of supply chain activities.Key activities in the supply chain are the logistics activities.They include planning, designing, implementing and managing the flow and storage of materials and information exchange in order to support basic logistics functions such as procurement, distribution, transportation, inventory management, packaging, and manufacturing.One of the strategic features of logistics service providers is the employment of customer service.In order to optimally achieve this goal they must use modern logistics tools and processes.ICT is the most important technology for improving logistics systems, because with its proper use the productivity of constituent activities of logistics systems could be significantly enhanced.Information technologies are seen as a resource of a company, as a source of its competitive advantage, and serve as a catalyst of change in a company.They are tools for control and management of all resources, internal and external.Adoption and successful implementation of ICT (hardware, software and network technology) are certainly prerequisites to logistics success.With the growing trend toward the use of international supply chains and e-commerce, logistics service providers for product warehousing, transportation and delivery are placing greater emphasis on ICT in order to remain competitive globally.In the last decades, innovative ICT have deeply affected the way business is performed and the way that companies compete.Innovations in electronic commerce play a key role in managing interorganizational networks of supply chain members.The internet represents a powerful technology for commerce and communication between supply chain participants as well as a technique for the improvement of supply chain management.The fact that ICT has a positive impact on efficiency as well as the overall performance of every company that uses it, regardless of its primary activity, is already well known.Therefore, supply chain companies can also greatly benefit from the use of ICT.Nevertheless results depend mostly on the level and type of ICT usage, which are correlated to a company's size and availability of technology, the integration of business processes along the supply chain it's still possible just with proper use of right ICT tools and technologies.And a fact that the use of ICT requires redesign and reorganization of logistics processes, which can be seen as one of the most important barriers to ICT usage, can also be overcome in the same way.Today's challenges and opportunities are so big and important that companies should be able to quickly adapt their business to changing end evolving markets, policies, regulations, and business models.So, the companies should be agile enough.(Oracle,

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