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This article was downloaded by: [George Mason University]On: 20 December 2014, At: 22:18Publisher: Taylor & FrancisInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House,37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
International Journal of Computer IntegratedManufacturingPublication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tcim20
Fostering collaborative meta-value chain practicesR. R. Rodriguez a , A. Ortiz a & J. J. Alfaro aa Department of Enterprises Management , Polytechnic University of Valencia , Valencia,SpainPublished online: 08 May 2009.
To cite this article: R. R. Rodriguez , A. Ortiz & J. J. Alfaro (2009) Fostering collaborative meta-value chain practices,International Journal of Computer Integrated Manufacturing, 22:5, 385-394, DOI: 10.1080/09511920802389546
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09511920802389546
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Fostering collaborative meta-value chain practices
R.R. Rodriguez*, A. Ortiz and J.J. Alfaro
Department of Enterprises Management, Polytechnic University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain
(Received 22 October 2007; final version received 27 July 2008)
This paper presents the main advantages of creating a meta-value chain as a source of sustainable competitiveadvantage in today’s markets. This is not an easy task as complete collaboration between the enterprises forming thevalue-chain as well as a proper interaction of the collaborative and technological processes must take place. The finalobjective of offering to customers an extended value proposition is enabled by the development of different productsthat implies collaborative practices between the members of the meta-value chain. Such products will be definedregarding the main collaborative processes to be potent within the meta-value chain and supported by technologicaltools and architecture that will enable the necessary informational flows between the members under differentformats. Finally, a meta-value chain is presented, as well as the main results, benefits, drawbacks and possible futureactions and recommendations for creating a meta-value chain.
Keywords: meta-value chain; collaboration; extended value proposition
1. Introduction
Globalisation and worldwide competitiveness havepromoted the creation and consolidation of the so-called extended enterprises (EE), which transcend thesingle enterprise domain and build meta-enterprises.
Most existing EE have initially focused on reinfor-cing the links and flows between companies that areinvolved in the same value chain. However, recently,the phenomenon has shifted toward the creation of EEthat cross the barriers of a single value chain and linkdifferent complementary value chains, building a meta-value chain. Many industrial companies have wantedto or have been selling and distributing jointly theiraggregated products for a long time and now they facethe challenge of the complete integration of their valuechains (Putnik and Cunha 2007).
The starting point of any meta-value chain winningapproach is consequently collaboration, where theconcept inherently implies agility and learn to learncapacity (Christopher 2003). Within a value chain, thedownstream supply chain, hereinafter called sellingchain, plays a key role to build and deliver competitivevalue propositions to customers as it represents thedirect nexus between the value chain and the customer(Seuring 2006). The selling chain focuses on themanagement of orders life cycle, from the initial orderplacement to the delivery and provision of physicalgoods, covering the part of the value chain that goesfrom manufacturers to end customers (including logis-tics platforms/operators, distribution, intermediaries,
resellers and retailers). Similarly, the meta-selling chain,defined as the aggregation of selling chains within ameta-value chain, becomes a key player to build anddeliver competitive extended value proposition tocustomers.
In order to build a successful meta-value chain,collaboration must be achieved at three levels (seeFigure 1):
The company domain; the focus is put here on eachsingle enterprise within the
. EE and leads to the collaborative enterprise
. The supply chain domain; the focus is put hereon each selling chain within the EE and leads tothe collaborative selling chain.
. The meta-value chain domain; the focus is puthere on the set of selling chains within the EEand leads to the extended collaborative sellingchain.
While industrial companies have learnt to establishadded-value relationships and flows with their supplychain partners, when they now face the new challengeof building relationships with other value chains, theysuffer from the lack of existing know-how andexpertise in meta-value chain operation and manage-ment (including methodologies, reference models,case studies, best practices, and business & ICTsolution maps) (Cingil and Dogac 2001, Kim et al.2006).
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
International Journal of Computer Integrated Manufacturing
Vol. 22, No. 5, May 2009, 385–394
ISSN 0951-192X print/ISSN 1362-3052 online
� 2009 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/09511920802389546
http://www.informaworld.com
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A recent trend in meta-enterprises has begun totransform their traditional master–slave win–lose/lose–win business relationship models into fully peer-to-peer win–win ones (Molina and Wright 2005, Busi andBititci 2006, Alfaro et al. 2007, Derrouiche et al. 2008).The same collaborative model is required for meta-value chains.
The creation of a successful meta-value chain isindeed a complex and risky endeavour that implies amajor transformation for a set of industrial companies,especially in terms of dependency of another valuechain, cross-enterprise and cross-value chain culture,market strategy, business processes and models,production and demand planning, logistics, andintegration of materials/management/decision/knowl-edge flows (Lee et al. 2006).
Many authors (Raghunathan 1999, Deek et al.2003, Shang et al. 2003, Akkermans 2004, Bititci et al.2005, Petersen et al. 2005, Pappas et al. 2006, Sohn andLim 2008) have presented the main advantages ofmaintaining supply chain collaborative practices,whereas there is not yet much research that pointsout the advantages of meta-value chain practices.According to some works (Prasad and Sounderpan-dian 2003, Rupp and Ristic 2004, Fairchild 2005,Seuring 2006, Ketchen and Hult 2007) it is possible toaffirm that there are several benefits to be achievedfrom meta-value chain practices.
(1) Higher value added to customers, in terms ofimproved value proposition by offering anextended value proposition, which will allowcustomers to have available a combination of
products/services that will meet and even over-come their expectations and needs.
(2) Enhancement of overall competitiveness, asenterprises will be able to provide differentiatedproducts/services with respect to one other. Thisis especially true in low-cost focused enterprises,which will therefore achieve competitive advan-tages and foster their innovation capabilities aswell as to gain knowledge of competing in presentand futuremarket conditions with the inter-valuechains collaborative practices;
(3) Cross-country and inter-value chains inter-changes, building worldwide networked enter-prises and value chains within a meta-valuechain context, which is supported by dynamicrelationships schemas and innovative coopera-tion and coordination business paradigms;
(4) Derived from the latter, cost reduction, opti-misation of materials, wastes and energyconsumption at both the intra-enterprise andvalue chain level. Additionally, better coordi-nation and cooperation practices should lead todetect inefficiencies of processes, stocks, mate-rial and information and more rational produc-tion plans. In general, supply chains forming ameta-value chain are considered as best valuesupply chains compared to traditional supplychains (Ketchen and Hult 2007).
Additionally, some authors (Prasad and Sounderpan-dian 2003, Fairchild 2005, Kim et al. 2006, Ketchenand Hult 2007, Gunasekaran et al. 2008) have pointedout some of the main challenges that meta-value chain
Figure 1. Business levels.
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practices should still overcome. Then, there is a need offollowing an integral approach when designing a meta-value chain, as efforts are usually put on covering veryparticular operations or services instead of offering anintegrated approach able to provide a true competitivemeta-value chain strategy as a response to a networkedand global economy (Prasad and Sounderpandian2003, Gunasekaran et al. 2008). Moreover, there is aneed to design the meta-value in a way it can react tobusiness environment changes and cope with fastchanging markets.
To achieve these objectives and be able to meet thepresented challenges, new business models and pro-cesses need to be developed between companiesinvolved in a meta-value chain.
Therefore, it is necessary to re-engineer the sellingchain of the different collaborative value chains inorder to offer to the final consumer new added valuepackaged products and services. These will provide thecompany with a competitive advantage and the endcustomer with an extended value proposition throughthe collaboration among extended selling chains.
This paper presents the main products that fosterthe creation and maintenance of a meta-value chain, aswell as the technological architecture that supportssuch collaborative practices. Additionally, the mainresults obtained by applying these collaborativepractices to one industry meta-value chain are alsopresented. It also highlights how this work has helpedto overcome some of the challenges introduced above,and set some future research in this field.
2. Methodology
This work has been developed in the context of the EUproject ECOSELL. Thus, this project aims to deliveran extended value proposition (EVP) to customersbased on collaborative processes between several valuechains, which together constitute a meta-value chain.When deciding what products would best support thecreation and maintenance of a meta-value chain, aconstructivist approach (Kasanen et al. 1993, Cough-lan and Coughlan 2002) based on the followingactivities: recompilation, analysis and study of scien-tific knowledge, acquisition of main postulates andconstruction of an initial framework and election ofsupportive technological approaches, was followed.The initial elements considered were the following:
. The requirements and objectives that enterprisesshould accomplish to create and/or form part ofa meta-value chain.
. The requirements that the products to be appliedshould cover to foster the creation and main-tenance of a meta-value chain.
. The requirements already covered by existingscientific and technological frameworks in orderto cover the needs identified in the two abovepoints.
The completion of these tasks can provide the initialstarting point for creating a meta-value chain. Thenext parts of the paper will show the products chosenwithin the ECOSELL project context and associatedrelevant technological issues; then, the main results,benefits and drawbacks achieved from a practicalapplication of a meta-value chain are presented,highlighting lastly recommendations for those enter-prises willing to form part of a successful meta-valuechain.
3. Creating and maintaining the meta-value chain
In the creation of a meta-value chain, enterprisesshould be aware that the definition process might bebroken down into two different environments: Designand Operation. The definition of the different tools,methodological and technical, needs to be carried outunder these two environments. Then, it is necessary tocarry out deep assessments and tools from both thebusiness and the IT perspectives.
When deciding what products would best supportthe creation and maintenance of a meta-value chain, itis necessary to define what the main processes of such ameta-value chain are in order successfully to competein the marketplace. In the ECOSELL project, en-terprises agreed to focus on delivering an extendedvalue proposition to final customers by offering a finalpack of complementary products, also called a productpack (PP). Moreover, the meta-value chain was formedby three enterprises, a Spanish tiles manufacturer; anItalian glaze manufacturer; and an Italian furnituremanufacturer. The glaze manufacturer was one of thetiles manufacturer’s first tier suppliers, formingtogether one value chain. Such a value chain togetherwith the one represented by the furniture manufacturerconstituted the meta-value chain whose main purposefor delivering and extended value proposition to finalcustomers was to offer a PP that included a combina-tion of both tiles and furniture. Therefore, the mainprocesses of this meta-value chain were related todownstream practices (selling chains) of the differentvalue chains constituting the meta-value chain. Hence,Figure 2 shows these main processes.
It is necessary to point out that the enterprisesforming the two value chains and, extensively, themeta-value chain of this work, had developed aprevious strategic work together. Then, they had toagree what of their products/services could be suitableto form a pack of products attractive enough for
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customers. Once they were willing to collaborate theyhad to choose tiles and furniture that could becombined taking into account aesthetic, shape ormanufacturability issues. As a result of this workthey also decided what products would support theirextended value proposition and what collaborativerelationships they would follow. Their collaborativeapproach could be defined as ‘cooperative collabora-tion’ (Cohen and Roussel 2003), as they were able toshare not only transactional information, but alsocritical information on forecasts, inventory availabil-ity, purchase orders or order and delivery status.
Then, in order to enable the meta-value chain, theproducts to be created need to focus on these mainprocesses that are: Demand, make, distribute andserve. In this case, the five agreed products to bedeveloped were: 1) collaborative order management; 2)extended distribution management; 3) collaborativeforecasting management; 4) extended performancemanagement; 5) collaborative exception management.These products are presented and explained below.
3.1. Collaborative order management (COM)–extended distribution management (EDM)
The COM–EDM improves the traditional ordermanagement process providing support for complexcross-value chain orders with special focus on availableto promise (ATP) (check availability of products)/capable to promise (CTP) (check capacity availability)/distribution to promise (DTP) (check availability oftransport) operations extended to the whole cross-
value chain. The main idea is to provide customers notonly with the possibility of ordering a PP but also toconfigure key parameters to perceive an extended valueproposition such as type of products, quantity, deliverydate, delivery place/location, and other factors such asinstallation capacity. A customer should be able toorder a PP made out of complementary productsoffered by organisations forming the meta-value chain;state a delivery date for such a product pack; to obtainin real time an answer from the meta-value chain.Then, organisations forming the meta-value chainmust collaborate for defining the collaborative pro-cesses themselves, as well as the associated informationto be shared. Then, the solution adopted was todevelop an application that, taking like input to thesystem a PP order with a prefixed delivery date (DD)and amount of product, would be able to explore thespace of solutions and then provide the most economic(if any) one to serve the required PP on time. In orderto succeed with the application of the COM–EDMproduct, organisations involved had to share informa-tion about manufacturing plans, manufacturing stocklevels, manufacturing capacity levels or distributionresources/availability. The basis of such an applicationis shown in Figure 3 and explained below.
A customer PP order, with a specific amount ofproducts and PP delivery date (DD) for tiles andfurniture, triggers the COM–EDM process. Theapplication first checks whether the customer asks forinstallation or not. If so, the system should check whatthe earliest availability installation date is and updatethe required PP delivery date, working out the new
Figure 2. Meta value chain main processes.
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delivery date (DD’). Then, the application creates a listof feasible nodes from where the PP products are eithermanufactured or stored. With this information, a listof feasible routes from these potential nodes to thefinal delivery point is created. This is a ranked list thatminimises associated distribution costs. The applica-tion checks now the DTP on the first ranked route(considering co-transportation issues between theinvolved value chains); if there is enough DTP to serveon time the product (DTP must be less than the DD’),the application then works out the time left to obtainthe products of the PP (new delivery date called DD’’).It then checks if there is enough ATP to serve theproduct on time (meeting the DD’’) in the first nodeassociated to the first ranked route (defined previouslyin the DTP checking). If yes, a confirmation message issent to the user, booking this route and associatedresources (DTP and ATP) up to 30 min for thisparticular PP order, waiting for the user to confirm it.In the case that there is not enough ATP, the system
checks the CTP in this potential node associated to thefirst route; again, if there is enough CTP to meet theDD’’, the system communicates it to the user, who hasto decide whether to confirm this order or not. In thecase that the CTP does not accomplish the requiredDD’’, the system now checks the second ranked routeand so on. At the end, if the application does not findany feasible route that meets the stated PP orderdelivery date, it provides the user with alternativefeasible dates.
It is important to point out collaboration as the keyissue in order to succeed within the meta-value chaincontext in general and in the COM–EPM product inparticular. The COM–EDM process goes beyond aseller having access to order management informationof different organisations and offering their productstogether. Collaboration must start by jointly definingwhat of their products are complementary and could,therefore, be sold conjointly. There are several issuessuch as aesthetic, physical or social factors that must
Figure 3. COD–EDM application.
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be taken into account and customised for everytargeted market. Then, each of the organisations needsto carry out this research and, once it is done, to bringit together and decide what products are susceptible tobeing complementarily sold. Additionally, there is aconsiderably high amount of data to be shared byorganisations, which exhorts to create and maintaincollaboration at the meta-value chain level. Forinstance, if a customer order cannot be met, and it isa premium customer of one of the organisations of themeta-value chain, such an organisation will be able tocheck why the order cannot be met, and, if it is causedby other meta-value chain organisations, it will be ableto negotiate in order to assure the accomplishment ofthe order. Further, another example could be the DTP,as the described application considers co- transporta-tion processes between the involved organisations andassociated value chains.
3.2. Collaborative forecasting management (CFM)
This product improves the forecasting by: (1) collectinginformation from all the relevant actors of the cross-value chain, (2) enhancing the forecasting algorithms,and (3) publishing the forecast results for their use inthe whole cross-value chain. It enables to carry out acollaborative forecasting between the enterprises of themeta-value chain regarding product pack orders. Thiswill lead to important cost savings for the participantsowing to the collaborative information processestablished.
The ECOSELL meta-value chain was based onsupply chains with an OEM configuration and, inparticular, where the OEMs receive the demandinformation from several sales points. These salespoints receive ECOSELL orders (from final customersthat require a pack of products manufactured byseveral supply chains) and NO–ECOSELL orders(from final customers that require a product manu-factured by a unique supply chain). In this situation,and taking the amount of information to manage andto share as the key factor, users decided to design asingle forecasting-multiple visibility process. In thisscenario, the forecasting process is made only for theOEMs and each node of the supply chain knows all theOEMs’ and other nodes’ demand forecasts andproductions plans. The software used to carry outthe CFM was DEMETRA 2.0, which is a Eurostatpublic usage one (Demetra 2008).
The required information for this CFM modelmust come from the historic demand of the OEM salepoints: order code (for every order), order type(ECOSELL or not), client code, product code,requested quantity, delivery dates, selling point code,distribution model code.
3.3. Collaborative exception management (CEM)
This product provides collaborative means to defineand capture, broadcast, and manage cross-value chainexceptions. Extended tracking and tracing function-ality support it. It enables enterprises to carry out areal time exception control and management pro-gramme. Then, if an exception comes up the systemwill alert, via SMS and/or email, the responsible peoplefrom the enterprises. Following a predefined flowchart,a workflow, depending on the type of exception thatoccurred (normal, important or critical), is commu-nicated to the chosen person of the correspondingenterprise via email/SMS.
3.4. Extended performance management (EPM)
This product provides (1) a set of KPI (key perfor-mance indicators) adapted to cross-value chain per-formance management, and (2) a set of methods,techniques and tools to support the monitoring ofthese KPI, both internally and externally, andthroughout the whole network. It carries out control-ling and monitoring tasks regarding the performanceof the meta-value chain in relation to the extendedperformance measurement system (PMS) defined bythe members. All the members of the meta-value chainshould define such an extended PMS and it shouldinclude all the main strategic objectives and associatedKPIs. Then, organisations should feed these KPIs byperiodically putting data in the database created tostore meta-value chain performance data. Periodicrevisions should take place to monitor and manage thedefined extended PMS.
All the above-presented products have a collabora-tive nature, and therefore data interchange and sharingprocesses only will be fully achieved if the members ofthe meta-value chain do trust each other. This is not aneasy task, as there are other issues to take into accountsuch as equity, visibility and coherence (Rodriguezet al. 2007, Hageback and Segerstedt 2003), whichmight even interact between them and have differentintensity cycles over a period of time. However,enterprises that are forming a meta-value chain shouldbe clear from the very beginning of not only the profitsthat such collaborative practices will bring to theirorganisations but also of the road to be followed andactivities to deliver to achieve such advantages.
Generally speaking, real time communication andchecking implies highly difficult data interchange andinformation sharing processes at the meta-value chaincontext. A customer at the end of the meta-value chaintriggers the process when she orders a product-pack atthe selling point. Then, the system should be able tocheck online different data from the enterprises
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forming the meta-value chain such as availabilitycapacity, stock levels, planning data, etc. Additionally,the application should support the communicationbetween enterprises to share information related todemand forecasting, performance management orwork orders.
Figure 4 shows graphically both the main differentinformational flows that take place in this meta-valuechain and the supportive architecture. Communicationbetween modules, which are independent components,and with external systems was carried out exchangingXML files (IN or OUT flows), as observed in Figure 4.Besides, the shadow management acted as a filter inorder to translate quantitative data into qualitativedata according to user privileges.
To summarise, the developed technological infra-structure offers the following functionalities:
. It allows integrations between separate supplychains: the infrastructure must support a dis-tributed environment linking a cross-countrynetwork. All products need to be accessible toevery user no matter their geographical location.
. It captures and sends data from multiplechannels.
. It provides the multi-language possibility for allthe products.
. It provides a workflow tool that allows managingtasks’ flows for exceptions resolution and ordersdispatching.
. It allows the evaluation of business rules in orderto help to decide the workflow to execute in everyspecific case.
. It provides a global security level: authorisationand authentication mechanisms are necessary in
order to secure the execution of businessprocesses.
. Log information must be stored for differentbusiness processes and transactions that couldbe, in some way, measured.
. Data interchange from multiple enterprises mustbe standardised (for instance, XML format) inorder to be able to be understood for all actors inthe network.
. Possibility of being able to integrate the productswith any kind of enterprise’s system.
. The products have been developed following amodular programming philosophy in order to beable to use each module independently.
. User activities must be monitored in order tomake a control and follow-up over user activitiesduring the product’s execution.
4. Application
Both the toolset and the architecture introduced abovehave been applied, within the ECOSELL project, to ameta-value chain formed by the next three enterprises:
. A Spanish tiles manufacturer.
. An Italian glaze manufacturer.
. An Italian furniture manufacturer.
Two value chains form the meta-value chain: a Spanishtile manufacturer and its first tier supplier form onevalue chain whereas the Italian furniture manufacturerrepresents the other value chain. The tiles manufac-turer has got three production plants and sevenwarehouses where its products can be stored. On the
Figure 4. Technological infrastructure of the meta-value chain.
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other hand, the Italian glaze manufacturer has twoproduction plants and four warehouses. Finally, thefurniture manufacturer has got one production plantand it has two warehouses. The application must takethis into consideration, especially when working outATP/CTP/DTP issues.
The glaze manufacturer was a tiles manufacturer’sfirst-tier supplier, forming together one value chain.Such a value chain together with the Italian furnituremanufacturer constituted the meta-value chain whosemain purpose for delivering and extended valueproposition to final customers was to offer a productpack that included a combination of both tiles andfurniture. The main results achieved as well asadvantages and main drawbacks, coming from sixmonths application of the different defined products,are next presented.
Regarding the application of the COM–EDM, themain advantages perceived by customers were theaccess to a truly extended value proposition; coordi-nated and synchronised delivery; disappearance of‘Purchase Management’ problems; higher degree ofcustomisation; lower total cost/time saving, under-stood as time saved by customers when aquiringdifferent complementary products at once, includingreliable delivery dates and perceiving therefore a higherservice level. On the other hand, although the COM–EDM provided solutions that proved later to befeasible more than 90% of the time, some problemscame up. The main problem was that the application,when dealing with products that could be taken fromlots of different places in the network (19 in thisparticular meta-value chain), worked very slowly andeven sometimes did not produce feasible results.Additionally, and as a consequence of this problem,it would be logical to think that the simultaneousaccess to the application from different users couldbring a problem of concurrency. At the data sharinglevel there were some problems related to thedynamicity of the data collection such as to keepbooked for some time a certain amount of product andreal time updates of manufacturing plans, manufactur-ing and transportation capacity. Most of these aretechnologically based problems, which are still openissues to be improved. The design and application of amathematical model that could govern the COM–EPM could perhaps deal more efficiently with thescenario when there are a big number of differentlocations to get the product from, although it woulddirectly rely on computational requirements.
At the value chain context, the application of thecollaborative forecasting practices (CFM) is betweenthe tiles manufacturer and its first tier supplier, theglaze manufacturer. As stated above, such collabora-tive forecasting practices will enable forecasting data
sharing between both manufacturers obtaining multi-ple competitive advantages such as cost optimisationminimising obsolescence risks ensuring that excessiveamounts of stock are not produced; creation ofcollaborative environments supported by the imple-mentation of ICT; or encouragement of collaborativedecision making and negotiation processes. On theother hand, at the meta-value chain context, the maininitial problem was the lack of data regardingproduct-pack orders when aiming to carry out theforecasting. Then, the adopted solution was to takethe historical demand data from the individualproducts selected to be combined to constitute aproduct pack, and carry out a CFM that was visibleto all the components of the meta-value chain. As thetime was passing and real data from product packdemand orders could have gathered, they would beincorporated into the CFM system, replacing theinitial one.
From a practical point of view, initially thebiggest drawback of this product was to handle thenumerous informational flows, as the informationalrequirements were high. Once that all the members ofthe meta-value chain contributed with the requiredinformation, the CFM offered good results in termsof calculation of prevision and visibility to theinvolved parts.
The CEM achieved good working results from afunctional point of view. In other words, when one ofthe defined exceptions came up in the system, followingthe associated workflow, it contacted the predefinedpeople and decisions were made. However, the mainproblem associated with CEM was not a technologicalone but a conceptual one, as it was very difficult toreach a consensus about what an exception was andalso if it was relevant enough for the meta-value chainto be included within the CEM. Further work on thisarea should be done when defining future exceptionsfor the meta-value chain.
Individual organisations defined an extendedPMS, which had important strategic objectives relatedto the meta-value chain and product-pack offer suchas ‘To improve market position’, ‘To have a servicelevel over the 90%’ or ‘To penetrate a new market’.The main drawback with this product was thesharing of data between the members, as either itnever came or there were delays. This might bemotivated because the organisations did take thisproduct as the one that offered long-term resultscompared to the others that gave results from thevery first day. Emphasis should be put in the future tokeep this product updated, as it is the core manage-ment tool of this meta-value chain and the one withthe capabilities to monitor and control the evolutionand achievements.
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Based on the experience of this meta-value chain,the main recommendations for forming and maintain-ing a meta-value chain are the following:
. It is necessary that clear complementarities existbetween the products or services to be commer-cialised as a package in terms of functionality,pricing policies, market focusing, market strate-gies and design aspects.
. It is necessary to be in such a market situationthat the customer is asking for integration of allthe elements of the purchased package, and theirassociated services (design, installation, etc.).Market studies are recommended.
. It is necessary that the companies that take partin the extended value proposition (EVP) given tothe customer in the selling point do not pretendany step forward other than collaboration(commercial, logistic, technical, etc).
. It is a situation considered as a real liferequirement that each meta-value chain partnermay have a different technical platform for theirICT systems in its own company and the meta-value chain technological platform has to adaptto his reality, mainly when each customer mayask for a different combination of companies inthe product package that she is ordering. Specialattention has to be given to this aspect in orderthat the meta-value chain technical solution doesnot interfere in each partner’s ICT infrastructurebut complement them, adding value to eachpartner for collaboration.
. The different size of the companies taking partin the EVP must not be a limitation to thecollaboration from a business policy point ofview, since it is not a constraint for the meta-value chain solution from a methodological andtechnical point of view.
. The selling point commercial personnel mustknow perfectly the characteristics of the com-mercial, technical, production, and logistic prin-ciples and infrastructure of the collaboratingcompanies, in order to perfectly understand theoperative framework of the meta-value chainsolution. Training must be given in this respect.
. One of the main barriers to success in thecreation and maintenance of a meta-value chainmight come from lack of trust between themembers. Regular meetings and smooth com-munication between the parts are recommend-able to overcome this issue. It is necessary toapply equity, visibility and coherence to thedecisions made. Further, and before joining/creating a meta-value chain, the potential part-ners should carefully think of whether they are
willing to share important data with otherpartners or not, as this is one of the key pointsin any collaborative process.
Additionally, the paper has met some of the researchissues highlighted in the literature as presentedpreviously in the introduction. Then, this work hasfollowed an integral approach that aims to cover allthe main business processes at the meta-value chaincontext: collaborative forecasting management, colla-borative order management, extended distributionmanagement, collaborative exception managementand extended performance management. Moreover, ithas provided the basis to form and maintain a meta-value chain able to implement a meta-value chainstrategy.
Finally, it is possible to affirm that, as a conclusion,the organisations from the presented meta-value chainhave reached some important competitive advantagessuch as selling chain visibility, as they can access othercustomers that had not traditionally been a target;higher degree of flexibility; competitive advantage;seamless integration and coordination; collaborationpractices; better market knowledge; and resource andnetwork optimisation.
5. Conclusions and future research
This paper has presented a new competitive strategythrough collaborative practices: the meta- value chain.Enterprises willing to create a meta-value chain need tocarry out sound analyses and assessment as well as tocreate tools not only at the business level but also atthe IT one. From these analyses the main processes tobe covered both methodologically and technologicallywill come up. Then, once the products to be developedhave been defined, enterprises should define thesupporting technological toolset and architecture.Needed informational and products/services flowsbetween the enterprises must be clearly defined anddata provided without delays. This case study haspresented five different products – collaborative ordermanagement; extended distribution management; col-laborative forecasting management; extended perfor-mance management and collaborative exceptionmanagement – as well as their main results. Practicalresults indicate that enterprises forming a meta-valuechain have a strategic tool that mainly allows them tooffer more customised products, to have a bettermarket knowledge, competitive advantages and re-source and network optimisation. On account of themain barriers to achieve a meta-value chain, successfulimplementation are issues such as data sharing, trust,coherence, visibility and equity, which are all difficultto overcome and must be carefully watched. Therefore,
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organisations should focus on preventing them fromthe beginning of the collaborative relationships. Be-sides, technological problems might come up in termsof concurrency and computational times, so analystsshould think of other alternative ways of implementingthe presented products.
Acknowledgements
This work has been developed in the framework of a projectpartially funded by the European Union, entitled ‘ExtendedCollaborative Selling Chain (ECOSELL)’. Ref. GRD1-2001-40692.
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