- Combination with some human and business resources
Worldwide Express Mail pioneered by DHL (and followed by FedEx, TNT, UPS) was based
on a combination of IT systems and business processes, the hub system. However, most of the
current systems implementations in logistics do not support such unique business innovations.
Then the learning curve should be determinant for most applications. Therefore, human resources
management (of both end-users and the project management team) is critical.
From this analysis, we can draw a set of rather provocative conclusions concerning e-logistics
solutions. For most logistics companies IT is more a threat than an opportunity, more a
“strategic necessity” than a source of “competitive advantage”; it results mainly from the difficulty
to differentiate specially when introducing “standard, ready-to-use” solutions. This
correlates with the relatively poor-performance of IT heavy users (Bot, 2000).