Comparative Theories of the Evolution of Technology

Abstract

Plenty of today's supply chains are slowed and even crippled by entrenched manual processes and disconnected enterprise systems. Right now, says Noha Tohamy, a supply chain and pricing solutions analyst at Forrester Research, "there's no significant integration between manufacturers and their suppliers' and customers' enterprise systems." Supporting her claim, more than 60 percent of companies responding to an April 2006 Aberdeen Group survey described their current supply chain processes as manual, spreadsheet-intensive, only partially automated and dependent upon different software systems within their own companies. In short, the current state of the supply chain is not too good. The reasons for the disconnects with supply chain partners are many, beginning with the fact that CIOs are still struggling to integrate their own ERP applications with their own supply chains, never mind connecting to and integrating with their partners'. Indeed, 60 percent of the respondents to a 2005 Aberdeen Group survey said complete internal integration would give them a competitive advantage, if only they could manage to do it.