Back to basics

By Steve Salkin -- Logistics Management, 4/1/1999

With all the hype surrounding retail sales on the World Wide Web, you might wonder whether anybody is using the Internet to conduct logistics business.

The answer is yes.

Last October, Cahners Research surveyed 1,000 logistics professionals as part of its Study of Internet Usage Among Logistics Professionals. Ninety-four percent of the respondents to that study indicated that they used the Internet for work-related activities. Seventy-four percent said they used the Internet on a daily basis.

Sixty-six percent of the respondents said the Internet application they used most frequently was e-mail. That is not unexpected--most respondents to Internet-usage surveys cite e-mail as the function they use most often.

Tracking and tracing shipments was second in popularity to e-mail. Other uses cited by a large number of logistics professionals included gathering the latest news on logistics industry trends and obtaining information about carriers. (See accompanying chart.)

A full one-third of the survey respondents reported that the Internet had had a positive impact on their companies' logistics operations. They cited numerous advantages gained by using the Internet, including improved communication flow, cost savings, improved customer access, improved productivity, faster order tracking and tracing, and the ability to get up-to-the-minute news updates.

The Bigger Picture

It is estimated that 163.25 million people worldwide are now online, according to Nua, an Internet marketing firm (www.nua.net). In the United States, an estimated 79.4 million Americans over the age of 18--that's 38 percent of the adult U.S. population--are online, according to a study conducted by IntelliQuest Research (www.intelliquest.com). With another 19 million or so expected to get connected this year, IntelliQuest estimates, there will be 100 million Internet users in the United States in the year 2000.

Which Internet service is most popular among those users? Yahoo (www.yahoo.com) now is the leading Web site, after overtaking America Online (www.aol.com) in January. Yahoo recorded more than 29 million unique visitors that month. (For comparison's sake, Logistics' Web site in January received just over 16,500 visits.)

Measuring Internet site traffic by "visits" is more accurate than using "hits." That's because hits include requests to view images that are located on a Web page. For example, if an Internet user viewing Logistics' Web site were to pull up the magazine's Home Page, that would result in one hit for each image on that page. Multiply that by the number of pages a user views during a visit, and it's easy to see why the number of hits would be rather meaningless. A visit, on the other hand, is a measure of the number of users who have looked at a site, regardless of how many pages they requested or how long they stayed at the site.

Given the predictions that the number of Internet users will continue to soar, it's no surprise that corporate spending on the Internet is projected to reach $85 billion this year and top the $200 billion mark by 2002, according to a report by IDC Research.

So, despite what some old-fashioned business people may say, the Internet is not a fad. There is indeed business to transact and money to be made with this fast-growing technology. Many new logistics applications are being developed and more will come, especially as logistics becomes more visible in the corporate structure. We'll keep you posted on the availability of these new services. In the meantime, happy surfing!

Have questions about the Internet or how to use it? E-mail ssalkin@cahners.com.

Internet Activities

(% of respondents using Internet for function)

E-mail 66%

Track and trace shipments 61

Obtain industry news and info 53

Obtain information about carriers 49

Conduct database searches 48

Purchase materials, goods,supplies 38

Research competitive information 33

View trade magazines 31

Use communication/bulletin boards 31