UPS's use of information technology in supply chain optimization

United Parcel Service Competes Globally With Information Technology

United Parcel Service (NYS: UPS) ended its latest fiscal year with Revenue of $46B, attaining a net Income of $2.2B, which is a very significant accomplishment given how turbulent and difficult the global economy has been for the three years. UPS has successfully differentiated itself from competing services providers by concentrating on how technology can enable greater efficiencies in their operations over time (Alghalith, 2005). There are nine strategic areas of services that UPS concentrates on, and this paper mentions each and looks in detail at Supplier/Vendor Management. It is noteworthy that UPS also relies heavily on information technologies to support their extensive analytics, data mining and data warehousing initiatives as well, which give them insights competitors do not have (Garrow, Ferguson, 2008).

UPS Services and Solutions

In addition to its Shipment Delivery business, UPS also offers services in Returns, outsourced Technology support including UPS Mobile, Logistics that includes Supply Chain and Supplier & Vendor Management, International Trade, Location-based Transportation, E-Commerce, Sustainability and Decision Green, and Financial Services including small business loans, insurance, credit card services and global supply chain finance. Appendix a in the Appendix provides an overview of these services from a recent screen capture from the UPS website. All of these services have the element of time associated with them from a customers' expectation standpoint. Each also combines in some form a transaction, between either external suppliers and distribution partners, or acorns internal networks of suppliers and logistics centers. All of them are mission-critical to a customers' business and in the case of Supplier and Vendor Management, the lifeline of a company's production centers to its customers. Supply chains are what give manufacturers the necessary components and materials to produce their products and get them delivered to customers on time or ahead of schedule.

The Implications of the Website on UPS

The fact that all the services UPS offers actively benefit from each other's learned insights gained and intelligence generated as a result of it investments further underscores how critical it is to the operations of this company. For UPS, their website is essential for their operations to succeed because it gives customers the opportunity to interact and get work done on a 24/7 basis. The website's role as a portal to services for the smallest to the largest and most complex customers cannot be overstated. In changing customers' behavior to focus on how UPS can assist them, the website has become the starting point.

Appendix a

Source: http://www.ups.com/bussol/?loc=en_US&viewID=browseView&WT.svl=PriNav&WT.svl=PNRO_L1