Study on key Issues and Critical Success Factors of e-Supply Chain Management in Health Care Services

Due to tremendous growth in information technology (IT) and economic globalization now the competition is among enterprises and their supply chains and not restricted to enterprises only. In the present global economic scenario, the organizations are forced to rethink their operations, alliances, partnerships and strategies to cope with these and similar changes. Supply chain competitiveness has been emerged as one of the strongest tool for gaining competitive advantages. Although healthcare industries have responded serious competitive challenges through their network alliance, the theoretical element for sustainable competitive advantage of healthcare supply chain has not been well examined. A supply chain is competitive if it is able to create and deliver value for its customers and its components. In the growing economy of India, supply chain competitiveness (SCC) is a real solution to the problems faced by organizations in this global environment, which now ultimately leads to a World of eSCM (Electronic Supply Chain Management). The present paper discusses some of the e-supply chain competitiveness issues and presents roles of suppliers, manufacturers and distributors, some future perspectives of e-SCM with an aim to identify the critical issues related to supply chain competitiveness and presents roles of the major components of supply chain, altogether. The authors have also discussed the emerging challenges of healthcare supply chains and their impact in collaborative healthcare network for global markets.