Transformations  in
Business & Economics

MASTERING LOGISTICS INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT
Borut Jereb

ABSTRACT. Management should bear in mind that logistics resources and strategy should be related to the needs of any private or public organisation. Effective management cannot operate without effective control. Both practice and empirical research suggest that the investments managed within a chosen supervisory framework achieve significantly better results than those implemented without supervisory approaches and frameworks. Firstly, this paper provides an evaluation of the status of investments in logistics as reflected in professional literature. With the literature review, the authors sought to identify current trends of investments in logistics. The statistics of manuscripts' content revealed how authors view and are aware of the topic of investments in logistics. Secondly, the article presents a survey carried out in organisations regarding their governance of logistics investments, whose results reveal important information needed to assess the actual current state of the topic and serve as a starting point of formulating insights in the field. The main finding is that in this area, no useful framework, standard or tool is being used to manage these investments. Furthermore, it has become evident that the companies face lack of knowledge and awareness of their importance. The survey results also show that, in the terms of investments in logistics, there is much room for further development, innovation and change of existing practices. Finally, a framework for managing investments in logistics called ValLog, is proposed. It is based on the Val IT framework, which provides approaches needed to successfully manage IT investments. The authors consider that Val IT can be adapted in a manner where its structure is kept intact, but the IT-specific parts are adequately adapted to the field of logistics. The authors believe that this will provide an appropriate framework for managing investments in logistics .

KEYWORDS:  investments, logistics, management, supply chain, value, IT.

JEL classification:  G11, E22, F21, P33.