Integrating e-commerce into the retail supply chain - A roadmap for implementation

E-commerce systems in the supply chain extend beyond inter-organisational transfer to an integrated and optimised information flow across a value chain. Adoption of such systems, however, has proved extremely difficult since they span organisational boundaries and involve interaction with external entities such as trading partners and third parties that may have different and conflicting interests. In addition, adoption of such systems typically involve significant changes to organisations' culture, structure, business relationships and working practices. This retail sector case study is based on an eclectic mix of methodologies and considers an approach to implementing an Internet based solution to support the supply chain of a department store whose supplier mix precludes a dictatorial approach by the retailer. A challenge in doing this has been in choosing the appropriate method at each step. The introduction of electronic commerce, for example, can cause a change in the internal and external relationships. This is highlighted by looking at the value system of the cross enterprise links which are being changed and the effect on the internal value chain. To enable the implementation a number of different approaches were crucial to understanding the stakeholder requirements, to optimise the information flows and to realise the potential for redesigning business processes. Whatever the technical option chosen for implementation of electronic commerce there is a need to understand the business processes and identify the information flows to optimise the value added in the supply chain. The paper concludes with a roadmap of the methods for analysing the needs for successful e-commerce implementations from a technology, business process and organisational perspective.