Avnet 2000 Annual Report Download - page 9

Buckaroo.com
(Strategic alliance/ equity investment)
Bid/ ask exchange for digital
commodities enabling participants
to make accurate pricing, pur-
chasing and selling decisions in a
neutral, efficient and orderly market,
and giving them trade, payment
and delivery integrity.
INTEGRATING THE VALUE WEB
Just as Avnet operates as an industry consolidator on a global level, so, too is
it a value web integrator.
The technology and emerging business models fostered by the Internet are
enabling Avnet to better serve its customers and suppliers. The Internet has
certainly transformed distribution channels. It has not, however, eliminated a
fundamental need: customers must have a significant amount of value added to
most suppliers’ products before they can use them.
There are a number of Web sites that trade, fundamentally, in information
alone. Avnet’s web site, www.avnet.com, is a first-rate source of information
and B2B expertise. Importantly, however, the Company also provides value-
added services and integrates the product, information, financial and physical
logistics flows that characterize today’s global Just-in-Time and Build-to-Order
manufacturing environment.
Just after the fiscal year closed, the Company launched its Avnet FasTrac™
Web portal, a primary information source for customers needing engineering
information from Avnet or its suppliers. Its goal: help engineers design, develop
and deploy their products to get them to market before their competition.
Customers can place orders, access order status information and communicate
with others to determine the latest information on new products, end-of-life
status and more. And Avnet FasTrac is but one part of the package. Demand
planning, design and component procurement assistance, information sourcing,
logistics, physical value-add, integration, marketing and materials management
– all enhance Avnet’s relationships.
Further, Avnet’s value in the value web goes well beyond the ease in online pur-
chases offered through catalogues, auctions and exchanges. That ease may
trump all other value for transactions like material spot buys and standalone
maintenance and repair operations procurement, but procuring product is often
only one small part of the equation. The connected marketplace demands that all
participants concentrate on core competencies, products and services and forge
relationships that provide complementary – and very necessary – competencies,
products and services of their own. Avnet provides the vital services that our
customers and suppliers cannot, or do not wish to do themselves.
eConnections.com
(Strategic alliance/ equity investment)
Streamlines the complex process
of bringing a product to market by
giving supply-chain partners a
custom tailored, integrated, inde-
pendent, private marketspace to
smooth communication, cut costs
and build margin for customers
and suppliers.
Customers have been outsourcing materials procurement, in-bound logistics,
materials management, physical value-add, prototype builds and supply-chain
services to Avnet for many years, and continue to do so at an increasing rate.
Suppliers have outsourced sales, marketing, customer relationship manage-
ment, demand creation activities, credit services and now, their own materials
logistics and warehouse management.
Avnet has demonstrated its ability to provide all these services, along with
the electronic components and computer products they surround, in a more
efficient manner than our customers and suppliers can themselves. The
Company’s long history of attracting and retaining the loyalty of the industry’s
major buyers and suppliers demonstrates the importance of established
supplier/ distributor/ customer relationships.
Bottom line: it’s not just about a fancy Web site, it’s about business. And in
business, the time-tested rules still apply. Avnet is tightly integrated into the
information, financial and, most critically, material flows of the electronics
value web, and its proven business savvy offers an established, sustainable
competitive advantage.
FROM BRICKS TO CLICKS
A global physical presence. More than $1.8 billion dollars in inventory and the
proven services that add value to it. More than a million square feet of warehouse
space around the world, with a quarter of that dedicated to value-added services.
This is the mortar that underlies today’s Avnet, the substance that makes Avnet
far more than just an information broker. It is the foundation that gives the
Company the power to transform itself from a distribution, or brick-and-mortar
company, to an e-fulfillment, or services led click-and-mortar enterprise.
Make no mistake, Avnet intends to be the partner of choice for its customers
and suppliers in this wired world. By creating Internet-enabled processes more
efficient than that of any other online marketplace, Avnet will compete even
more effectively in the interrelated flows at work in the value web.
IT LEADERSHIP
Avnet continues to invest in core areas that build its foundation for e-business
and satisfy the global needs of its customers and suppliers. As the Company
www.avnet.com
According to Forbes, avnet.com is one
of the 25 “Best of the Best
” in the
computer/ electronics industry. Avnet
was the only distributor so recognized.
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