Chapter 3 : strategies initiatives for implementing competitive advantages

Supply chain management 

It involves the management of information flows between and among stages in a supply chain to maximize total supply chain effectiveness and profitability.

-   Four basic components of supply chain management are : 

1)   Supply chain strategy – strategy for managing all resources to meet customers demand

2)   Supply chain partner – partners throughout the supply chain that deliver finished products, raw materials and services

3)    Supply chain operation – schedule for production activities

4)  Supply chain logistics – product delivery process

•  Effective and efficient SCM systems can enable an organization to;

o      Decrease the power of its buyers

o      Increase its own supplier power

o      Increase switching costs to reduce the threat of substitute products or services

o     Create entry barriers thereby reducing the threat of new entrants

o    Increase efficiency while seeking a competitive advantages through cost leadership

Customer relationship management (CRM)

involves managing all aspects of a customer’s relationship with an organization to increase customer loyalty and retention and an organization’s profitability. CRM is not just technology, but a strategy, process and business goal.

•   CRM can enable an organization to;

o      Identify types of customers

o      Design individual customer marketing campaign

o      Treat each customer as a individual

o      Understand customer buying behaviors

  

Business Process Re engineering (BPR)

•    It is a standardized set of activities that accomplish a specific task, such as processing a customer’s order
•    The analysis and redesign of workflow within and between enterprises

o     The purpose of BPR is to make all business processes best in class.

•     Finding Opportunity Using BPR

o     A company can improve the way it travels the road by moving from foot to horse and then horse to car

o     BPR looks at taking a different path, such as an airplane which ignore the road completely

Enterprises Resource Planning (ERP)

•   It  integrates all departments and functions throughout an organization into a single IT system so that employees can make decisions by viewing enterprise wide information on all business operations
•  Keyword in ERP is “enterprise”.
•     ERP systems collect data from across an organization and correlates the data generating an enterprise wide view.