Matching Methods for Information Sharingwith Supply Chain Context

Abstract: The productivity and competitiveness of companies fundamentally depend on their ability to handle information. With the available technology, the opportunities to collect and utilise information are better than ever. One of the industries that has proven to benefit significantly from analysing large quantities of information is the retail industry. However, before information can be analysed it has to be obtained. This often means that information has to flow between members in a supply chain. The purpose of this study was to investigate which methods that are suitable for sharing information in different contexts between suppliers and retailers. The research was conducted as a case study within the Swedish sporting goods industry, where the information sharing relationship between one supplier and seven of its customers was investigated. The studied methods for information sharing were manual document handling, web portals and through a third-party EDI service provider. The third-party EDI solution benefits both parties. However, this method is not always applicable. If resources are scarce for both communicating parties and no technological solution for information sharing is in place, the manual document handling method is a suitable short-term solution. If one party with lots of resources frequently share information with parties that cannot afford to invest in technological information sharing solutions, a portal can be a suitable compromise to let the company that invests in the portal gain efficiency benefits while the other parties continue to manually provide information.