Then the phone rings. It s your boss telling you he wants 2,000 units to be shipped out Wednesday evening. Three years ago, accommodating a last-minute change like this would have been enormously complicated, and you almost certainly would have ended up sacrificing cost for time. Automated markets tools will eventually link different vertical supply chains in order to optimize across supply silos, beyond immediate trading partners. So while Acme Mousetrap optimizes trades with its direct suppliers, these suppliers will be optimizing with their suppliers, those suppliers with others, and so on from node to node in the supply web.
Online procurement is just the tip of the iceberg.
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