Integration Liberation: A New Way to Integrate Your Supply Chain
Ironically, the flexibility and ease of integration these vendors provide could also be their downfall because the costs of switching between them become much lower than with traditional packaged application vendors. For Tyco Electronics’ Vance, going with E2open wasn’t "a bet the ranch proposition. I wouldn’t be hard-pressed to bring in another tool to do the same kind of process," he says. "It’s a tool; we’re not locked in."
While CIOs may not be locked in, many are locking on to this new and more efficient way of doing business with their suppliers and customers. And, given the results so far, no one wants to go back to the bad old days. "It is inconvenient for us to do business in a different way," says Hitachi’s Jayaraman. "If we should start faxing things, [our employees] would quit.
"We don’t have very many fax machines left."
