SCM is not only managing goods!

Companies no longer compete among production centres, trying to obtain higher quality products at lower costs; business units are no longer competing in an isolated way, it will now be the way in which they manage their respective supply chains which makes a company stand out from its competitors.

A lot of benefits can be achieved by means of properly integrating the supply chain. How many of them are achieved will depend on the level of integration and, therefore, on the quality, speed reliability and sociability of the information available along the chain.

A greater integration of the supply chain can lead, on the one hand, to a reduction in operational costs and investment in infrastructures, which could, in turn, result in a price reduction. On the other hand, managing the supply chain in an integrated way can enable a company to increase the quality of service offered to customers through delivery times and product availability. As a result, it is clear that the integration of the supply chain can increase the level of customer satisfaction, thereby increasing the possibility of keeping them over time and winning their loyalty.

Consequently, from an integrated supply chain management point of view, it is vital to have the right information at the right time to make decision-making easier, so that information management becomes one of the cornerstones of the organisation. Nowadays, due to the large amount of information generated by any logistic process, it is essential to resort to computing to ensure an efficient flow of information, and goods.

Moreover, in the last few years, there is starting to be a lot of talk about Web 2.0, a subject which is of great interest. I am convinced that anything to do with Web 2.0 (blogs, wikis, social tagging, RSS…), could be a very interesting lever for change towards greater collaboration between different agents along the supply chain.