Erdem Kimya Inc. (EKI) joining a B2B relationship with Migros was good decision, Migros is currently responsible for 60% of EKI sales and Migros is one of the major retail chains in Turkey. By 2001 Migros owned 450 stores in Turkey and abroad, had introduced Cyber Shopping, and had extended their retail presence into Sofia, Bulgaria. By EKI joining Migros allows them to expand their market to all regions of Turkey and abroad and to customers that may not have had the opportunity to be exposed to their products.
EKI can benefit from the B2B relationship with capabilities to now manage the following operations through the service of the B2B platform: order tracking, current account tracking (invoice tracking), payment information, sales, warehouse and retail stores inventory, and electronic invoicing. By EKI developing a B2B relationship with Migros benefits EKI for the reason that EKI can now monitor their products in real time within Migros facilities, such as store in stocks which can reduce the bullwhip effect where products can be supplied as needed based on actual customer purchases, hence reducing overall working capitol. With such information available by store and region EKI can develop customer buying trends in specific regions or stores within Turkey and abroad and can anticipate or forecast when a store would need restocked with a specific product and provide a just-in-time (JIT) inventory system reducing their overall cost . This is a technology that EKI needs to take advantage of and embrace.
Potential benefits of the B2B relationship for EKI are decline in costs (decrease in shipping costs, reductions in order placement, inventory and warehousing costs, promotion costs, and work force savings), sales increase (effective marketing and sales strategy setup because of ease of access to information, overview of promotion strategies and rapid awareness of changes in consumer preferences and reactions), efficiency in invoice control (reduction in...