Information exchange between buyers and suppliers

Herewith an announcement of a series of post concerning the information exchange between buyers and suppliers. In this series answer are given on questions like: What types of information are exchanged between buyers and suppliers? Which goals serve the exchange of certain types of information? Why is information sometimes not shared even though it obviously will result in an increase in profitability? And last but not least, what can we do to control the information sharing process in order to maximize profit?
Before trying to answer these questions I start with a post on the IT (infrastructure) of organizations because it is an important enabler and accelerator for information exchange these days and therefore cannot be neglected. It shapes the context in which it takes place.
In the second part of this series, I will focus on the types of information that can be exchanged and how this may lead to benefits for organizations. The third post of this series elaborates on understanding the information exchange process itself. Here we take a closer look at the factors that drive information sharing and try to understand why or why not organizations choose to share information. Finally, in the fourth and final post of this series, I’ll share some advice for optimizing the exchange of information as well as some of the pitfalls that organizations often face.

I’ll hope you will like this series and I want to invite you all to comment on it. Stay tuned as the coming week the first post will appear.