e-Overload

By Peter Bradley -- Logistics Management, 3/1/2000

Not a day passes that this magazine doesn't receive at least one press release announcing another Internet startup dedicated to the logistics market. Most days, we receive more. Some of the new companies come with impressive capitalization. Others are founded on no more than an idea--some good, some not so good.

For shippers and carriers alike, the proliferation of these dot-coms offers a number of things: the potential for gaining efficiency, the risk of using businesses that have little more than a fancy front end and little backup support, and a large dose of utter confusion. The one thing that appears certain is that business-to-business electronic commerce is expanding exponentially and will continue to do so for a long time. And if b-to-b electronic commerce is about anything, it is about the supply chain and logistics. What it should do, if it fulfills its promise, is link trading partners across the supply chain in a seamless way, providing rapid exchanges of information. More than a mere transaction tool, the Internet promises to be a real engine of commerce. It offers potentially enormous efficiencies in the management of inventory, transportation, purchasing, distribution, and other activities. But in one odd way, the proliferation of logistics service providers on the Web creates as many hazards as answers. Will the systems work as promised? Is the promise any more than brokerage dandied up for the Web? What guarantees are there that data will be secure? Or tamper resistant? What really lies behind the Web page? For the suppliers, the challenge is to demonstrate that what they bring to the market makes them a better option than a competitor.

There is help available. A number of books have been published that make an effort to clarify some of these issues or speculate on how the very nature of business will be transformed. We'll try to sort out the business in our regular coverage of logistics technology and electronic commerce. (Next month, we'll publish a special supplement on logistics and e-commerce that we hope will bring some order to the chaos.) In addition, the Council of Logistics Management has chosen "RedefiningLogistics.com" as its theme for this year's conference.

It would seem inevitable that the e-logistics business will undergo a severe shakeout at some point. When or how is impossible to tell: Internet businesses often don't seem to be bound by the usual rules of economics. Even so, the market will eventually choose the winners and the losers. At the center of that market are logistics professionals.

In the meantime, the torrent of announcements of new companies and new services makes anyone in the business ready to plead "e-nough."