Opportunities for competitive advantage in logistics through information technology

We examine the strategic issues facing logistics service providers (LSP) and the information technology (IT) options open to them. We conclude that “supply chain integration” and deploying EDI are, at best, short-term competitive advantages and will soon become competitive necessities. To identify opportunities for long-term competitive advantage, we then examine the emerging management issues in logistics and identify the characteristics of a “Truly-Productive Organization (TPO)”. We argue that building a TPO is a potential source of advantage, because it is based on people skills which are difficult and expensive to duplicate. A key element in building a TPO is to influence the ways in which people work, by adopting patterns of thinking and acting which reinforce desired objectives. Information technology can support achieving a pattern-based organization. To show this, we identify and discuss a number of emerging technologies such as groupware and workflow management systems, and new types of PIM´s, and show how they fit together into an integrated information architecture for supporting a pattern-based TPO. We argue that this is an architecture which can support achieving a people-based competitive advantage