Designing a Generic Web Information Architecture for Information Exchange and Interoperability of the Ethopian E-Commerce Logistics Sector
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Date
2020-06-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
The complexity of transport and logistics chains these days needs a fast and reliable information
exchange system to ensure an efficient and cost optimized logistics solutions. To this end, standardizing
and automating information flow of logistics chain is needed for a more transparent and optimized
services. Intermodal logistics connections are becoming more commonplace and complex involving
many business actors in the process, transnational scope, and multimodal logistics stages. The objective
of this research is to design a generic web Information Architecture (IA) to promote information
exchange among the various e-Logistics stakeholders. The research was carried out using design
science research. TOGAF was also used as a designing framework to identify entities in the IA. Both
primary and secondary sources were used for data collection. Key information sources were selected
from logistics companies that are involved in the logistics supply chain on the basis of TOGAF under
the umbrella of DSR methodology. The challenges and practices identified during the research were
mainly the absence of standardized and interoperating information exchanging platforms, which in turn
forces companies to operate disjointedly, the lack of standardized and reliant information exchanging
process, planning and implementation was confirmed by the interviews and other documentations i.e.
literature reviews and companies’ business forms and registers. This has become an impediment on the
quality of data, security issues at different levels. This necessitates the design of a generic Information
Architecture, which is web based platform to exchange data among the involved logistics actors.
Therefore, this research attempts to undertake the design of generic Web Information Architecture. The
architecture has covered all the information required regarding the Logistics Supply chain such as
transportation warehousing management and operations processes. The proposed prototype was
demonstrated to the logistics firms and evaluated by experts from five logistics firms out of the ten the
study was conducted. The evaluation outcome revealed that 94.1% of the specialists have confidence in
the proposed IA which they deem to be appropriate, to improve information exchanging practice in the
logistics chain. However, one major challenge the experts raised is the issue, how the standardized IA
can materialize to simplify information exchange of the industry, which in turn necessitates attention of
all stakeholders to step forward.
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Keywords
Information Flow, Information Architecture, Generic Web Information Architecture, Logistics Supply Chain