14.1 Introduction * Information technology (IT) an important enabler of effective supply chain management * Typically spans the entire enterprise and beyond, encompassing suppliers on one end and customers on the other. * Includes systems that are: * internal to an individual company * external which facilitate information transfer between various companies and individuals
Questions
* What is the impact of business process change on IT implementation? * What are the goals of IT from the perspective of supply chain management? * What IT components are needed to achieve the goals of supply chain management? * What are the supply chain component systems and how should they be approached? * What are decision support systems and how do they support supply chain management? * What criteria should be used to select decision support systems? * What drives the selection of best of breed systems?
14.2 The Importance of Business Processes * Recent study by MIT, PRTM and SAP * Companies that invest mostly in business processes do better than those who invest in IT only and lack the appropriate business processes. * Investments only in technology without the appropriate business processes lead to negative returns.
Challenges
* Identify measures to characterize supply chain effectiveness * KPIs and SCOR Model are objective ways * Develop measures to characterize the level of maturity of the business process and the information technology employed by the company * Much more difficult because of variations across companies
Characteristics of the Level of Business Maturity * Based on the SCOR model * Consists of four stages
Level I: Disconnected Processes * Many independent processes. * Organized functionally with no or low degree of integration. * Supply chain