E-Supply Chain: Using the Internet to Revolutionize Your Business: How Market Leaders Focus Their Entire Organization on Driving Value to Customers

Journal of Business Logistics, 2003 by Miller, Cynthia L

E-Supply Chain: Using the Internet to Revolutionize Your Business: How Market Leaders Focus Their Entire Organization on Driving Value to Customers Charles C. Poirier and Michael J. Bauer Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., San Francisco, 2001 236 xv pages

In E-Supply Chain, Poirier and Bauer propose e-commerce as the enabling feature of advanced supply chains that optimizes the full supply chain network as well as satisfying the customer. Based on their experience with "hundreds of firms in nearly all industries" they believe a vast disparity exists between understanding and action for firms applying electronic features to enhance supply chain efforts, particularly regarding the Internet (p. xiii). The reviewer is a practitioner doing doctoral research in supply chain management and information technology. As such, the reviewer was intrigued by the approach of E-Supply Chain in proposing how firms can marry supply chain and e-commerce to achieve market dominance.

The book is targeted at practitioners trying to determine how e-commerce can help in specific organizational areas relating to supply chain management including information technology and systems, design, procurement, planning, engineering, manufacturing, logistics, human resources, finance, and administration. Chapters 6 through 11 focus on the application of e-commerce in these various areas.

Poirier and Bauer define supply chain as "those core business processes that create and deliver a product or service, from concept through development and manufacturing or conversion, into a market for consumption" (p. 3). Supply chain management, in their definition, includes integrated processes for product and service design, sales forecasting, purchasing, inventory management, manufacturing or production, order management, logistics, distribution, and customer satisfaction. The depth in the functional chapters provides a detailed guide to using e-commerce within those functions (information technology, purchasing, engineering and manufacturing, logistics, marketing/sales and customer service, and human resources).

The fundamental contribution ofE-Supply Chain is in the presentation of an e-business development framework (p. 14) that describes how a company moves from an internal focus to an external focus to full supply chain connectivity, and the perspective of multiple business functions in each stage of that progression. This framework is used in each functional chapter as the basis for discussion regarding evolving that function to an advanced supply chain state.

Chapter 5, "Constructing the Future Roadway," provides a useful discourse on the process and steps a firm should go through in developing their "value chain constellation" (p. 73). Ten specific steps are described to address how a firm should determine and select partners and collaborate, in addition to how to establish and execute an action plan for the value chain constellation. Partners in the value chain need to be in sync on multiple fronts including facets such as enterprise objectives, technology, infrastructure, and use of resources. One implication of this is that 3PLs may be limited to partnerships with firms of similar objectives, etc., which may limit outsourcing potential, or at least make the selection process more critical.

The book was written during the boom of Internet start-ups, as evidenced by the many examples referring to dot-com companies that were successful during the boom but later crashed or faded away. Published in 2001, the book only addresses the dot-corn successes, and suggests that "e-businesses" are in general superior to and will be more successful than traditional businesses because they question the existing paradigms of how to manage and communicate in the supply chain. The reviewer contends that today the Web is recognized as a channel, but the Internet channel is not generally believed to be a strong stand-alone business model.

The reviewer was disappointed in the authors' focus on consumer (B2C) supply chains and limited consideration of business-to-business (B2B) supply chains. Most examples in the book emphasized parcel delivery and retail-type models (final delivery to stores), which positioned supply chain concepts that do not readily transfer to B2B supply chains. This limits the applicability of ESupply Chain in a great variety of industries.

The book is recommended to B2C supply chain practitioners who seek an understanding of the basic concepts of e-commerce relative to the specific supply chain areas covered in the book. The depth in each subject area covered in Chapters 6 through 11 should be a useful guide to managers seeking to incorporate e-commerce into their functional areas. The book could also be useful as a basic text for students in e-commerce trying to understand the application of Internet technology in various supply chain areas. The reviewer does not recommend this book to the academic or practitioner who expects empirical research to support the claims made about how and why companies are doing what they do.