Research undertaken by Partnership Sourcing Limited with support from the Department of Trade and Industry and the Confederation of British Industry.
Value chain is the entire set of internal and external operations necessary to deliver a product or service across company and institutional boundaries to its final consumer. When we include all the communication links (increasingly electronic) among participants in a value chain we define what may be called 'The Virtual Enterprise'. (McGuffog, nd)
Vision 2010 is an in-depth study into the factors that will affect the management of procurement over the next ten years. The report is the culmination of months of research into the future of purchasing and supply, based on the experience of leading professionals (both academic and from industry) and the knowledge of Partnership Sourcing Limited (PSL). PSL is a not-for-profit organisation set up by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) to help companies use the idea of partnership, rather than confrontation, in customer-supplier relationships. This group of experts has identified key trends in value chain management. Its findings are essential reading for everyone keen to get the inside track on how changes in purchasing practices will affect their organisation and its bottom line. The PSL expert group addressed the following questions:
What e-commerce has allowed firms to do is to bring intangible assets to the fore to tease out the value they add, and even to make a business of them. By making inter firm collaboration easy and inexpensive, e-commerce allows intangible assets to be leveraged across a much larger buyer base. Time and space constraints no longer apply so they no longer have to be co-located with the tangible means of production. (Melnicoff, 1999)
Vision 2010 provides a starting point for chief executives, purchasing and supply professionals and all who are interested in how their organisation and its relationships will look in the future.
Figure 1: Inputs to the Vision 2010 project
Figure 2: The virtuous circle of PSL
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