Exploring the impact of Information technology in Supply Chain Management: A Review

Abstract The sustainability and growth of many business organizations is supported with the help of Information Technology (IT). To improve the organizational performance IT is considered as a basic process of Supply chain management. Supply Chain Management can be defined as the management of the flow of goods and services and involves all the processes that transform raw materials into final products. The main aim of supply chain management is to maximize customer value and achieve a sustainable competitive advantage in the market. The main activities in Supply chain includes from product development, procurement, production, logistics and Information Systems. Through physical flows and information flows the organizations that make supply chain are linked together. Because of the nature and structure of supply chain, Information technology had major impact on the ability of internal integration of various processes and more importantly external integration with suppliers and customers. Different tools are there in Information technology to gain the awareness of information, analyse this information and execute it to increase the performance of supply chain. This paper reviews some of the literature that uses Information Technology in supply chain management. Keywords: Information Technology (IT), Supply Chain Management (SCM), Procurement, Production, Logistics, Suppliers, Customers