Supply chain is the largest expense for any product company and generally accounts for 60 percent to 90 percent of all costs. Controlling such a substantial expense demands continuous performance improvement and high operational efficiency. Research suggests the existence of a statistically significant relationship between analytical capabilities and supply chain performance. In other words, data analysis can assist in controlling supply chain costs. Further, an analysis of 310 companies from different industries in the USA, Europe, Canada, Brazil and China indicates that analytics of the supply chain plan has the second-biggest influence on supply chain performance.

When organizations turn to the web to offer their suppliers and/or joint venture partners direct access to services and business processes to reduce costs and speed up processing, a virtual organization emerges.