Is e-fulfillment on your radar these days? I sure hope so. Don't be misled by the absence of dot com cash and razzle dazzle. In fact, now is when you really ought to be paying attention.

To begin, e-fulfillment is no longer just about dot coms. It's about business. Plenty of dot coms still exist but they are not alone in either the B2C or B2B world. Companies that couldn't spell e-orders a short time ago are now handling them in their fulfillment operations. And it isn't easy for anyone. Just ask Jeff Wilkie, senior vice president of operations at Amazon.com.

He recently told Business Week "we spent the whole year (2001) really focused on increasing productivity without more capital spending." And it worked. The company saved over $20 million in e-fulfillment costs in the final quarter of 2001 alone. By the way, Amazon.com did it by putting fewer items in the wrong places and shipping more items with fewer people.

In other words, the basics of e-fulfillment look a lot like the basics of fulfillment without the e. But by no means are all of the basics of e-fulfillment in place quite yet. As online tracker Bizmetric found during last year's holiday season, the 21 e-tailers it watched took 1-1/2 days longer to fill orders than a year earlier. The good news is they were better at meeting their delivery promises.

Clearly, e-fulfillment is a work in progress. And that progress is what this special issue is all about. As Editor at Large Tom Feare put it - "From distribution center design to handling returns, e-fulfillment operations are coming up with leading edge ideas that save time and costs while maximizing customer service."

Now e-fulfillment is bringing manufacturing into the loop. Supply chain visibility, the wired plant, trading exchanges and data sharing are all at the forefront, explains Senior Editor David Maloney. In some cases, the Web is the conduit for the information about orders, e and otherwise. In addition, e-fulfillment centers are partnering more closely with manufacturers to tighten up the supply chain.

But the real gains here will come as collaboration takes hold. As Senior Technical Editor James Cooke explains, collaboration among suppliers is still in its early stages as the e-world pushes companies to work differently with each other. It may not all happen tomorrow, but closer collaboration is the future.

Finally, what's going on in e-fulfillment is equally important to warehouses and distribution centers that have never handled an e-order. As various e-fulfillment techniques become best practices, there is every reason for them to be adopted by other fulfillment operations. A good idea is a good idea, after all. And now is not the time to suffer from not-invented-here syndrome.