The rapid development and expansion of the social services and social networking sites (SNSs) on the Internet has boosted interdisciplinary research on online communities as a part of social network analysis. Social networking creates a unique opportunity to establish new business contacts with people from unexplored markets to gain new customers or contractors. The goal of the paper is to present a new idea for acquisition of new customers in the business-to-business market using individual human relationships existing SNSs. In order to find an appropriate solution, the SCAN method (System for Client Acquisition via Social Network) has been proposed. This method is a B2B application to support new markets gaining process. It makes use of paths over human relationships that lead in the shortest and steadfast way from the searching company members to the potential clients represented by their selected employees.

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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the effects of demand planning practices on the disruptions induced by operational risk. The study reveals whether the negative consequences of operational risk factors (covering demand, supply, control and process risks) can be absorbed or amplified through the application of specific demand planning practices in supply chains. Design/methodology/approach The study involves the partial least squares path model procedure. Likewise, the items of the constructs in the outer model were subjected to a purification process by principal component analysis with the orthogonal (varimax) and oblique (Promax) methods of rotation. Findings The findings suggest that although one may not observe uniformity and standardization in the role of demand planning in alleviating the negative effects of operational risks, still some regularities can be obtained. Having said that some demand planning practices tend to mitigate or reinforce disruptions driven by operational risk, whereas the other practices simultaneously absorb and amplify disruptions driven by operational risk. Practical implications The study shows that different managerial instruments, which are not inherently dedicated to risk management, when appropriately applied, may have an indirect impact on the mitigation of supply chain risk. In particular, the concept of demand planning might be very helpful for managers when dealing with demand and control risks. Originality/value The study simultaneously examines a more detailed bundle of practices forming the demand planning process. The research attempts to investigate the link between the demand planning process and operational risk consequences, derived from all sources (supply, demand, process and control). The paper shows that risk management is not a sole tool to mitigate disruptions. Among the concepts, which contribute to decrease risks is the demand planning process. The study demonstrates that the demand planning process when applied as a component of supply chain management, may contribute to mitigate certain operational risks.

Managing a supply chain for products with a short life cycle, like fashion apparel, high-tech, personal computers, toys, CD’s etc., is challenging for many companies (Fisher and Raman, 1999). Because the life cycles of these products are too short for standard time- series forecasting methods (not longer than one – two years), an important way of overcoming the challenges of managing supply chains for such products is to find appropriate forecasting methodologies. The standard forecasting methods require some historical data, which are often unavailable at the time when the forecasts are being performed for products with a short life cycle (Lin, 2005). The method described in this article allows forecasters to use life cycles of similar, analogous products to arrive at the initial forecasts for the product(s) at hand.

Część 3. Rola nowoczesnych metod zarządzania logistycznego w procesie redukcji kosztów i poprawy jakości obsługi klientówLech A. Bukowski, Jerzy Feliks: Ocena wartości użytkowej informacji logistycznych w warunkach niepewności oraz turbulentnych zmian otoczenia ..