INNOVATIONS IN LOGISTICS TECHNOLOGY

E-commerce and the desire for a competitive advantage are destroying traditional ways of doing business in the transportation segment of today’s supply chain management, and logistics is now emerging as an area that can deliver tremendous benefits.
Cutting-edge supply chain logistics management solutions, from a traditional return-on-investment (ROI) perspective, are vital to a successful business, but, more important, the return-on-value (ROV) from these solutions is the real criterion of significance. Rather than focusing purely on return as a function of cost, examining ROV and its effect on revenue, customer satisfaction and long-term competitive advantage is a new way of analysing the true bottom line.


Re-Examining Traditional Measures
Enterprises have traditionally evaluated the acquisition of business application software primarily as a function of return on investment. Certain assumptions were required for this model to provide a meaningful yardstick, and chief among those assumptions was the premise that the new system provided a more efficient means of addressing a current set of processes and activities. Moreover, and almost without exception, these replacement decisions focused exclusively on improving the efficiency of internal enterprise processes.
But the business world has changed, and along with it, so have the fundamental notions upon which enterprises base their marketplace advantage. Now new business models—courtesy of the e-commerce revolution—are displacing traditional methods of transacting business. As a result, strategies that base competitive advantage solely on current intra-enterprise process excellence are at the very least under threat, with a likely fate of being relegated to the proverbial woodshed. Looking beyond traditions, one sees the intriguing concept of transforming internal processes, functions, and cost centres into competitive weapons or even profit centers. As an enterprise looks outward into its value chain—defined as the trading partner ecosystem encompassing suppliers, partners, and customers—is there an opportunity to leverage internal excellence into inter-enterprise competitive advantage?


Transportation Logistics and Technology
The traditional model of transportation management is being transformed and redefined by innovative advances in supply chain logistics management. These technologies now encompass all material movements across the value chain from raw materials to finished goods. And now, thanks in large part to the advent of the internet as a flexible and robust medium of collaboration and process execution, supply chain logistics management strategies may be conceived and executed for immediate and sustainable competitive advantage.