irect project costs, and distributed costs. Hard costs include tangible good such as hardware, wiring, software, telecommunications lines, and the like. These are for the most part fairly easy to quantify and allocate. Soft costs include labor, training, loss or gain of sales opportunities and represent intangible factors that are difficult to quantify and hard to allocate. This basic principle of e-business today is being implemented in various size and type organizations conducting their businesses on-line, which have created a new environment for transportation and logistics.E-businesses are forcing a fundamental shift in the structure and services of transportation and logistics businesses. Firms are transporting more on-line purchased goods and they are actually subordinating their individual business plans and identities that becoming an integrated part of their electronic business customers’ supply chain. One solution to this change is creation of extranet that links and allows trading partners—customers, warehouses, suppliers, drivers, rail partners—independent of their internal resources, efficient interaction with the supply chain. It is that information technology provides the underlying links as well as the logistics data collection and analysis platform for all these activities. There is myriad of examples outside of the companies that have established this kind of relationship within their supply chain coverage, making this efforts not inexpensive. That is why most of the businesses try to establish a joint network to streamline procurement of transportation and logistics services.SupplyLinks Global Logistics Network is a recent example of multi-modal transportation services network that provides customers with single, neutral source to plan, book and manage shipments worldwide. This web-based logistics management company includes AIT Worldwide Logistics (IL), BAX Global (CA), Central Freight Lines (TX),...
