Avnet 2000 Annual Report Download - page 8

Avnet embraces the New
Economy and its enabling
technology, using it to enhance
customers’ and suppliers’
product development,
manufacturing, supply-chain
management and customer
service needs.
Globalization, acquisition, consolidation…what has
made it all possible? In a word, technology.
And now the Internet radically alters market dynamics as
the New Economy takes hold. It is transforming how companies execute their core
business processes, how consumers shop for and purchase goods and services,
how value is created and distributed within industries, and ultimately, how the
global economy is structured. The Gartner Group reports that business-to-busi-
ness (B2B) commerce over the Internet is projected to rise as high as $7.3 trillion
in 2004. Internet-based transactions already encompass and facilitate the entire
purchasing cycle, providing everything from product information to post-sale cus-
tomer support. No greater agent of change has affected business as a whole, and
the electronics industry in particular, than the Internet.
As electronic component suppliers and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs)
reach out to emerging consumer markets and take advantage of various coun-
tries’ manufacturing efficiencies, their supply chains must be able to rapidly and
efficiently accommodate their demands anywhere in the world they choose to do
business. Avnet is embracing the Internet and the New Economy, taking advantage
of the enabling communications technology of the wired world to enhance the
product development, manufacturing, supply-chain management and customer
service needs of global customers and suppliers.
At a very fundamental level, Avnet’s strategy has always been to occupy as much
space on the supply chain as possible by creating services that connect suppliers
to customers, integrating the physical flow of the products Avnet sells to
customers around the world. In the wired world, that supply-chain model is
changing. The linear nature of the chain is evolving into a broader, more complex
structure – a value web characterized by an interconnected marketplace where
the boundaries between buyers and sellers blur, and where model configurations
change with the rapidity of the latest technological advance. Avnet is at the center
of this value web.
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THE NEW ECONOMY
THE INTERNET
Avnet is at the center of the value web
in the interconnected marketplace of
the new economy.