Logistics in the electronic economy

The main driver of change in the modern economy is information in electronic form, which can be automatically processed and transmitted by computers. One of the most important phenomena is the “democratization” of the applications of electronic information, understood in this way, in the economic world. We owe this, firstly, to the rapid development of personal computers, and secondly, to the equally rapid development and popularization of the Internet on a global scale.

The most significant features of personal computers from this point of view are their low price and standardization, starting from hardware, through operating systems, to the simplest business applications such as word processors, spreadsheets, and simple databases. The standardization of personal computers has a significant impact on reducing the costs of training their users and reducing the costs of maintaining computers and basic software. Thanks to low purchase costs and reasonable usage costs, personal computers have found application in all workplaces where it is purposeful to provide access to electronic information. Generally speaking, the increase in work efficiency at such a workplace more than covers the costs of equipping it with a computer and the costs of using the computer. It is worth emphasizing that the above observations apply to the workplace, not the type of enterprise. They therefore refer to all types of enterprises –

from global corporations to individuals running their own business.

The Internet, in turn, thanks to its low price and universal reach, has “democratized” communication in a similar way. For the economy, the exchange of information in electronic form is of fundamental importance, as such information can be immediately processed and therefore used in management processes. No other medium enables such cheap, fast, and geographically unlimited exchange of electronic information as the Internet. Furthermore, the Internet is primarily focused on communication: human-to-software, software-to-human, and software-to-software, even if there is another human on the other side of the “software”. Human-to-human communication is still more effective in other forms: in the form of direct meetings, telephone, and video conferencing, the basic feature of which is synchronicity, which by necessity costs more. Communication to/from software is a necessary condition for the automation of management, and this in turn is a condition for improving management efficiency, primarily, though not exclusively, at the operational level.

The application of processing and transmitting electronic management information within and between enterprises has reached such a level that we speak of an “electronic economy”. The opposite of the electronic economy is the “paper” economy, whose organization depends on the circulation of paper documents. The “paper economy” must by necessity be less efficient than the electronic economy, because compared to the circulation of electronic information, the circulation of information on paper media is slower, more expensive, has limited reach, and is not suitable for automatic processing.

Defining the electronic economy as one in which business management processes are carried out by computer networks, in particular by the Internet, we wish to emphasize very clearly that this concept refers to all sectors of the economy and to all enterprises, regardless of what they produce.