With the advent of Internet commerce and the constellation of economic, cultural and geographic forces driving globalization, big and small companies alike have to begin evaluating their information systems for global competence. The second a supply chain crosses borders it becomes more complex. Globalization has recontextualized supply chain management. The gains created by traditional supply chain and enterprise systems over the last years cannot merely be extrapolated onto the global market. Instead, a whole new class of software and best practices for Global Commerce Management must quickly emerge for companies to translate the age of globalization into the age of opportunity. The global enterprise is ripe for radical cost reduction and efficiencies, as well as new customer service and performance benchmarks, but, first, companies must reorient their systems around the new organizing principle of Global Commerce Management.
Global Commerce Management (GCM) is the ability to effectively manage regulatory, financial and logistics constraints to profitably increase market share in a global economy. GCM requires integrated software, services and information distinct from, yet complementary to, ERP, advanced planning and scheduling (APS), order management (OMS), warehouse management (WMS), transportation management (TMS), and legacy systems. GCM extends the scope of these traditional systems - while upping the ante on compliance-focused ITL systems - by addressing three principles common among all business management processes:
GCM represents a new frontier in supply chain management, leveraging the gains of mass customization, the global competencies of existing ITL systems and the significant advances made in domestic distribution and using them collectively as its launching pad. The marriage of ITL and supply chain management solutions signaled by Global Commerce Management will be a key stepping stone to helping companies compete and win globally, enabling them to effectively and profitably engage in the global marketplace to increase their market share, customer satisfaction and shareholder equity.