CHAPTER THREE - STRATEGIC INITIATIVES FOR IMPLEMENTING COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGES

Supply Chain Management (SCM)

• Supply chain management involves the management of information flows between and among stages in a supply chain to maximize total supply chain effectiveness and profitability.
• There are four basic components of supply chain management : 

1.  Supply Chain Strategy – managing all the resources required to meet customer demand for all product and services.

2. Supply Chain Partner – the partners chosen to deliver finished goods, raw materials, services including pricing, delivery and payment process along with partner relationship monitoring metrics.

3.   Supply Chain Operation – the schedule for production activities.

4.   Supply Chain Logistic – the product deliver processes and elements.

Customer Relationship Management  (CRM)

·         Customer relationship management involves managing all aspects of a customer’s relationship with an organization to increase customer loyalty and retention and organization’s profitability.

·         Customer relationship management allows an organization to gain customer’s shopping and buying behaviors to develop and implement enterprise wide strategy.

·         Organizations such as Kaiser Permanente have obtained great success through CRM system.

·         Customer can contact an organization through various type of technology such as call centers, web access, email, faxes and direct sales that provide access to CRM information within different system from Accounting System, Order Fulfillment System, Inventory System and Customer Service System.

·         CRM allow us to :

1.      Communicate effectively with each customer

2.      Understand customer product and service.

·    CRM Strategy – CRM s not just technology but also strategy an organization must embrace on an enterprise level.

·        Implementing a CRM system :

1.      Help an organization identify customer

2.      Design specific marketing campaign

3.      To treat customer as an individual

4.      Understand customer buying behaviors

Business Process Reengineering (BPR)

·         A business process is a standardized set of activities that accomplish a specific task, such as processing a customer’s order.

·         Business process reengineering is the analysis and redesign of workflow within and between enterprises.

·         Creating value for the customer is leading factor for instituting BPR, and information technology often plays an important enabling role.

Enterprise Resources Planning (ERP)

·         ERP integrates all departments and functions throughout an organization into a single IT sytem so that employees can make decisions.

ERP systems collect data from across an organization and correlate the data generating an enterprise wide view.