Consequently, aspiring to become an excellent business simply through an entirely inward looking management approach can be very illusive. What's more practical and indeed :more assured way of better managing a business is to managing it along with the supply chain through appropriate strategic positioning, adequate structural configuration, collaboration, integration and leadership. The paramount importance of doing so does not derive from the theories or reasoning, rather it is withstood by the business performance improvemeint and market measured customer results. It is the tangible benefits and success that it delivers makes the subject importamt.
Supply chain management is also pervasive and ubiquitous. One can hardly find any aspect of business that has nothing to do with supply chain management. Take an example of quality management - a very important part of today's business management, and ask yourself a question: can you mamage and improve the quality standard of your product or service measured by the end-consumer without managing th•e suppliers and buyers in the supply chain at all? Of course not. Business value creation is always a collective contributiion from the whole involved supply chain.
1.2 Defining supply chains
Ploughing through the plethora ofliteratures, one will come to realise that there are as many different definitions as many of those who cared to write about it. However, a broad conceptual consensus on the notion of Supply Chain (SC) and Supply Chain Management (SCM) is beyond anybody's reasonable doubt. Based on that, the author would like to offer his definition of SC here and SCM in the next section.