“…Maintain control of order-to-delivery process McIvor and Humphreys (2004), Ho, Au, and Newton (2003), Lewis and Talalayersky (2000), Goldsby and Eckert (2003) Productivity and efficiency improvement via process automation, improved visibility and quick information exchange Kaplan and Sawhney (2000), McLaren et al (2002), Eng (2004), Rask and Kragh (2004) Resource utilisation and cost reduction Kumar and van Dissel (1996), McLaren et al (2002), Bengtsson and Kock (2000), Skjøtt-Larsen et al (2003), da Silveira and Cagliano (2006), Howard et al (2006) Secure market competitiveness Stockdale and Standing (2004), Fu, Ho, Chen, Chang, and Chien (2006) Pool of complementary resources Kumar and van Dissel (1996), Martinez et al (2001), Bengtsson and Kock (2000) Reach a critical size ('critical mass') Martinez et al (2001), Golicic et al (2002), McIvor and Humphreys (2004), Standing et al (2006), Howard et al (2006) Network optimisation, economy of scale and scope of logistics operations Martinez et al (2001), Standing et al (2006) Risk, infrastructure and expenses sharing Kumar and van Dissel (1996), Bengtsson and Kock (2000), Standing et al (2006) Access to superior technology Frankel and Whipple (1996) Zineldin & Bredenlow (2003) Relational Reduce uncertainties and opportunism in the supply chain Martinez et al (2001), Kumar and van Dissel (1996) Desire to coordinate and collaborate in exchanging information and conducting transactions Kumar and van Dissel (1996), …”