Editorial by Giancarlo Corò
In the crowded internet landscape, small companies are beginning to have access to viable and practical logistics solutions. These are intercompany virtual warehouses, managed by specialized operators, which, through low investments and reduced supply management costs, bring significant benefits. But what are the necessary conditions for the realization of these plans?
One of the most concrete forms of integration between e-commerce and logistics arrangements is taking place through virtual platforms. This is certainly not the only way in which logistics meets network technologies. However, the possibility of optimizing supplies and reducing purchasing and supply costs through access to informed inter-company integration systems can be a notable result, especially for SMEs. The idea on which these solutions are based is typical of logistics: warehouses and supplies enjoy high economies of scale, so that if more companies share these activities, each one has something to gain – in terms of technical efficiency – in relation to the solutions featured. In fact, in addition to greater market power and lower administrative costs ensured by purchasing concentration, it is known that, maintaining parity in service level, the cost of supplies is an increasing function of the number of warehouses. Why then do small businesses, especially in industrial districts, not carry out common warehouse and supply services? The answer is that small companies are not only concerned with technical efficiency, but also with maintaining their own management autonomy (an irreplaceable source of flexibility) and are quite reluctant to share critical information about their own markets, whether supply or distribution, with direct competitors. Furthermore, the creation of common logistics platforms faces high investment costs that are difficult to recover in the event of a change of strategy by a single company.
Virtual platforms overcome this and other obstacles and also reduce the first to a large extent. In fact, to optimize supplies and deliveries it is not necessary to build a common warehouse, it is enough to have a specialized operator manage information on the status of existing warehouses and replenishment activities related to purchases. Not all supply categories can be managed this way. But for many types of purchases and supplies of commodities the operation is viable.
An important condition is, therefore, that companies are able to share a logistical-communicative standard in which the virtual platform takes place. Solutions of this type are now offered by some operators, such as Datilog and Unitec (for an analysis see the 2000 edition of Systems & Enterprise magazine), which have put into practice open informed systems that, once adopted by more companies, allow savings on supplies (thanks to economies of scale) and simplify administrative management (tasks benefiting from a single invoice for repeated purchases).
