Sunday, 26 July 2015

CHAPTER 3 Strategic Initiatives for Implementing Competitives Advantages

 Strategic Initiatives

Organizations can undertake high-profile strategic initiatives including:

Supply chain management (SCM)
Customer relationship management (CRM)
Business process reengineering (BPR)
Enterprise resource planning (ERP)





Supply Chain Management (SCM)

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 :

Supply chain strategy – strategy for managing all resources to meet customer demand
Supply chain partner – partners throughout the supply chain that deliver finished products, raw materials, and services.
Supply chain operation – schedule for production activities
Supply chain logistics – product delivery process




Effective and Efficient Systems can enable an organization to :

Effective and efficient SCM systems can enable an organization to:
Decrease the power of its buyers
Increase its own supplier power
Increase switching costs to reduce the threat of substitute products or services
Create entry barriers thereby reducing the threat of new entrants
Increase efficiencies while seeking a competitive advantage through cost leadership



Customer Relationship Management :

involves managing all aspects of a customer’s relationship with an organization to increase customer loyalty and retention and an organization's profitability

Many organizations, such as Charles Schwab and Kaiser Permanente, have obtained great success through the implementation of CRM systems





CRM is not just technology, but a strategy, process, and business goal that an organization must embrace on an enterprisewide level

CRM can enable an organization to:

1)Identify types of customers
                                    2)Design individual customer marketing campaigns 
              3)Treat each customer as an individual
                4) Understand customer buying behaviors




Business Process Reengineering:


Business process – a standardized set of activities that accomplish a specific task, such as processing a customer’s order

Business process reengineering (BPR) – the analysis and redesign of workflow within and between enterprises
The purpose of BPR is to make all business processes best-in-class




Finding Opportunity using BPR :

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

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





Enterprise Resource Planning :

integrates all departments and functions throughout an organization into a single IT system so that employees can make decisions by viewing enterprisewide information on all business operations

Keyword in ERP is “enterprise”







ERP systems collect data from across an organization and correlates the data generating an enterprisewide view




Evaluate how Apple can gain business intelligence through the implementation of a customer relationship management system

Create an argument against the following statement:  “Apple should not invest any resources to build a supply chain management system

Why would a company like Apple invest in BPR?





Chapter 3 Case : Consolidating Touchpoints for SAAB

Saab required a consolidated customer view among its three primary channels:

Dealer network
Customer assistance center
Lead management center



Chapter 3 Case Questions : 


1) Explain how implementing a CRM system enabled Saab to gain a competitive advantage

2) Estimate the potential impact to Saab’s business if it had not implemented a CRM system

   3) What additional benefits could Saab receive from implementing a supply chain management system





No comments:

Post a Comment