The Overall Impact of Information Technology on Business

Wal-Mart's entropy w atomic number 18housing capabilities argon vast, probably making Wal-Mart's the largest data warehoexercising in the humanness with its 423-terabyte system handling data from over 5,000 stores worldwide (Kaltenheuser 2005). Walmart's data warehousing operation is so efficient that it costs "less(prenominal) than one percent of the $256.3 billion in revenue" acquire by its stores in 2003 (Kaltenheuser 2005). Data warehousing is used to cogitation sales trends and track inventory as well as tying in to Wal-Mart's Retail Link decision-support system that suppliers use to study item-level inventory and sales information (Whiting 2004).

Another short letter that has maximized use of advanced technology to improve its operations is QVC. QVC has capitalized on the benefits of virtual warehousing and innovative transport strategies such as cross-docking. The virtual reality store that QVC's internet shopping leg (iQVC) uses has reduced operating costs and made fulfilling orders much swift than ever before. Whereas items stocked in a physical warehouse must be stacked on pallets or shelves and picked for raptus when a customer places an order, in a virtual warehouse, products are available electronically from suppliers rather than being physically stocked (Roussel-Dupre 2001). A virtual warehouse looks at its various statistical distribution centers as a network; their location is not an thin out as long as the

In an operation like QVC's, fulfillment is critical. QVC's customers expect fast delivery of products, and QVC has gone beyond traditional shipping bettermentes to come upon that quick turnaround.

One of the strategies used is crossdocking, in which shipments from different sources nates be consolidated to reduce the cost of outbound battery-acid and eliminate the inventory-holding function of a warehouse ("Crossdocking"). Instead of the public method of receiving shipments of goods, storing them, and then shipping them out again, crossdocking transfers incoming shipments right off to outgoing trucks without storing them in between. Shipments generally spend less than 24 hours in the warehouse this way, and in some cases they are thither less than an hour ("Crossdocking").

products can be delivered to the customer on time. iQVC communicates with drop-ship suppliers through a fulfillment hub system instead of value-added networks (VANS) and realizes 25% bring down labor costs, half the number of backorders, and 20% lower vendor order confirmation time (Roussel-Dupre 2001). This inventive approach allows iQVC to receive orders 24 hours a day, 7 days a week from anywhere in the world, making previous stocking and
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