Supply chain management in e-commerce (I.)

E-commerce is shifting from fashion to life, becoming an indispensable channel of retailing and becoming an indispensable part of modern life. The http://www.aliyun.com/zixun/aggregation/9668.html of e-commerce "> Success lies in its backstage supply chain management.

Here to share with you e-commerce in the supply chain management. Focus on supply chain integration, supply chain network architecture, and supply chain real-time control. I hope not to involve too much technical details and professional vocabulary, but to describe them in plain language and examples.

There are many similarities and differences between e-commerce and traditional retailing supply chain management. The same point is part of its supply chain, which is made up of manufacturers, distributors/wholesalers, transportation, warehouses, retailers, customers, commodities, etc. Only the retailers here are selling through the Internet channel. Supply chain management is also the management of logistics, capital flow and information flow.

Logistics can be subdivided into logistics (inbound Antananarivo) and logistics (outbound Antananarivo), the former refers to the procurement and transportation of goods and processes from suppliers, the latter refers to the customer orders from the warehouse distribution to customers in the hands of goods and processes. Logistics is a flow, that is, from manufacturers to distributors to retailers to the flow of customers. Also has the reverse logistics, refers to the customer to the retailer, the retailer to the dealer, the dealer to the manufacturer's return.

Capital flow refers to the flow of funds to buy goods, usually in reverse flow, by customers to retailers, retailers to distributors, dealers to vendors, and so on. Payment can be made in a variety of ways, such as the number 1th store to pay cash, credit card, debit card, bank transfer, tripartite payment (Alipay, wealth pass, etc.), rebate account payment, post Office remittance and so on.

The flow of information flows forward and reverse all have, the reverse flow is mainly the requirements of the message (commodity inquiries, purchase, booking, personalized needs, market forecasts, upstream supplier feedback and assessment, etc.) by orders, reports and other forms from the downstream supply chain upstream flow. The main is to downstream customers reply, inquiries, shipping information.

The real-time control of supply chain refers to the information transparency of the whole supply chain, and the real-time and dynamic price of the commodity, determines the source and quantity of the purchase, and assigns the warehouse to satisfy the customer's order and assigns the logistics provider to carry out the last kilometer distribution.

Inventory management needs to have accurate forecast to the market. For a product in the market sales forecasts, mainly consider the following factors: Historical sales data, price elasticity, promotions, seasons, competitor prices and promotions, alternative prices and promotions, and so on.

The effective management of funds flow will have a healthy cash flow. Cash flow is paramount. The VC partner of the company I founded in the United States once said to me, "cashflow is the mother of all businesses". I don't understand it until I'm short of cash. E-commerce must make the cash flow forward, that is to say (payment cycle-Collection cycle-Inventory turnover > 0).

Third-party logistics timeliness in China is indeed a problem. In the United States, such as UPS,FEDEX,DHL and other excellent logistics business, the problem is much smaller. Store No. 1th is managed by Fine KPI Management, regular business review, and strict rewards and punishments.

The differences between E-commerce and traditional retail supply chain management come from the characteristics of e-commerce: no entity shops (1 network coverage nationwide and even global), unlimited shelves (bottlenecks only in the server and warehouse capacity), automatic Order Processing (24-hour service), virtual shopping (door-to-door or in the designated place to pick up goods).

Date of writing: December 6, 2010