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Professor Tom McGuffog defines logistics and Supply Chain Management as “Maximising added value and reducing total cost across the entire trading process through focusing on speed and certainty of response to the market.” Owing to globalization today, SCM is an essential tool for enterprises to compete competently either at a global scale or local level. This a necessity, more so for the manufacturing industry especially when it is about offering products support services at a competitive price along with a better quality than their competitors.

Today, where every organization requires a competitive edge over others there has been an emergence of companies that offer continuous resource and development services for logistic and supply chain management sectors. There are expert engineers who assist you by providing various scalable logistics tools and solutions. The focus areas are-

1. Procurement
2. Shipping management
3. Contract management
4. Warehouse inventory & distribution

Apart from providing logistics and SCM solutions, these companies also have the know-how in building experience that help in integrating legacy components and various other technologies. In addition to that, a few service providers have the experience in workflow management frameworks that assist to fasten the time-t-market and minimize costs. Other abilities in this domain are-

1. Content management solutions that include contract document management, vendor selection, reporting and auditing discrepancies, after delivery and payments, and rates and pricing management.
2. Logistics framework for managing, evaluating and collecting high-volume information associated with inventory, distribution and commercial shipments
3. SCM applications and mobile asset tracking
4. Security solutions and cargo tracking for government entities
5. Web-based and m-tier distributed logistics enterprise software
6. Multi-carrier shipping management systems that assist difficult, high-volume, and shipping in various locations

Today logistics and supply chain management has enabled an organization to rethink about their overall operation and reorganize it, in order to concentrate on the core competencies. At the same time, it also assists in outsourcing processes that are beyond the core competencies of the organization. Owing to the present competitive market scenario, it is an important tool for an enterprise to survive. The business strategy on implementing SCM will certainly influence the market positioning of a product and would help selecting the correct resources, work force and partners.