Small and midsize enterprises have traditionally burdened key personnel with administrative tasks and legacy communication systems - printed matter, telephone, fax and face-to-face meetings - to coordinate and disseminate information generated by their internal business processes. These task typically fall under two general headings: supply management and demand management...

Supply Management

• Designers spend excessive amounts of time on the phone, face-to-face or fax coordinating product specifications and prototyping requirements with suppliers and/or manufacturing slowing development efforts and time-to-market;
• Procurement and purchasing agents generate sourcing Request for Quotes (RFQ) using fax and "snail mail" to correspondence with established suppliers minimizing competition among vendors and potential materials savings;
• Shipping departments telephone and fax freight forwarders and consolidators for their logistics needs contributing to delays and material outages;
• Operations departments fax production schedules and delivery schedules to external manufacturing facilities exacerbating demand/supply signal mismatch (over runs or shortages).

Demand Management

• Accounting departments consume time phoning and faxing banks to verify account or lock box balances and wire transfers adding risk and operational uncertainty;
• Merchandising departments administer promotional programs and contractual relationships with established retail outlets via face-to-face, fax, and phone correspondence slowing responsiveness and consuming human resource;
• Channel managers spend too much time phoning and faxing channel partners with order status and purchasing history, detracting from the channel's "selling time";
• Marketing and advertising departments snail mail, fax and phone traditional print advertising and product cataloging efforts, resulting in repeated requests and lost opportunities.

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