An analysis of the current use of inter-organizational information Systems in the Irish grocery industry

Résumé du document

The population for this survey consisted of all Irish-based food & drink suppliers, who directly supplied to one of the five major retailers in the Republic of Ireland. Of the 350 or so companies which qualified for this survey, almost 1/3 responded to the mailed questionnaire; a further breakdown of respondent companies is presented below in terms of product category, firm size and individual respondent title. Those who supply to more than one major retailer are far more likely to use IOS than a supplier supplying only one retailer'.
As we can see form Fig.4, almost 3/4th of the respondents are either using or are in the process of implementing IOS with retailers, leaving just over 1/4th of respondents not trading with retailers via IOS. The vast majority of those not using IOS are suppliers supplying to only one major retailer, with 58% of respondents who supply to just one retailer not using IOS (this accounts for the majority of the 1/4th mentioned above). Those who supply to more than one retailer are greater users of IOS, with 87% of such suppliers either using or in the process of implementing IOS with retailers. (Figs. 7A & 7B)

Extraits

[...] 14A & B show that the majority of suppliers in both cases were somewhat negative in their evaluation of support offered to them by retailers. Retailers again scored very poorly on the actual level of support provided in key areas. As we can see from Fig.15 suppliers considered technical support, initial start-up support, continuous support & a general friendly and helpful atmosphere as the most important support facilities, and whilst suppliers scored these in particular highest, their mean scores were still very low (Fig.16). [...]

[...] The smaller suppliers are lagging in IOS implementation with just over half of them currently using IOS as we see from Fig. 5B. The growth & adoption of IOS last 3 years has seen the most significant increase in the implementation & use of IOS amongst suppliers' Suppliers have been using IOS for a varying amount of years, of those who are currently using IOS some have only just begun using it in the last month or so, whilst others claim to be using IOS for 15 years (interestingly the supplier using IOS for 15 years is a small company!) The belief that IOS is still a pretty new phenomenon to the Irish Grocery is supported by the fact that the majority of respondents are using IOS for only 1-3 years (Fig. [...]

[...] Objectives concerning cost-cutting, and internal, functional or operational improvements, received low scores (Table of means in appendix??) whilst, as mentioned, the prominent objectives are all retailer-orientated. When we take into account also that over 2/3 of suppliers also state that it is retailers who initiated IOS more so than suppliers (Fig.12), we begin to see that this industry is, like many others, very retailer-led in terms of IOS implementation. Later on in this section we will look in depth as to what strategy retailers use to implement IOS with suppliers. [...]

[...] Electronic Data Interchange ; is the most dominant form of IOS in the industry' What is obvious from the data collected is that Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is the dominant form of IOS amongst suppliers to the Irish Grocery Industry. Of the 70% that are currently using IOS with retailers, the vast majority (over are using EDI as a means of trading with their retailers. Also worth noting is that the remaining not using EDI, are all using i-EDI. (Fig. Interestingly, over 1/4 of those using EDI also use another system EDI or other web-based systems). [...]

[...] Suppliers were also asked to consider their expectations for IOS prior to their initial implementation. Almost 2/3 of suppliers had reasonably high- very high expectations, with only 10% admitting low expectations from IOS. IOS objectives Irish Grocery industry appears to be very much retailer-led in terms of IOS implementation' Fig.11 deals with the original IOS objectives of suppliers and we can see that the two most common objectives amongst suppliers when implementing IOS are satisfy retailer requests' and improve retailer-supplier relations' (Mean scores of 6.5 & 5.49 repectively). [...]