CHAPTER 3 - STRATEGIC INITIATIVES FOR IMPLEMENTING COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGES

                                                Strategic Initiatives

Organization can undertake high-profits strategic initiatives including :-

• Supply Chain Management (SCM)
• Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
• Business Process Reengineering (BPR)
• Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)

                                                               

                             

                                        SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT 

                                                       (SCM)

• Involve the management of information flows between and among stages in a supply chain to maximize total supply chain effectiveness and rofitability.
• Four basic components of SCM includes :-

1. Supply Chain Strategy- Strategy for managing all resources to meet customer 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 Logistic- Product delivery process.

Effectiveness and efficient SCM system 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

(CRM)

• 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 goals 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

(BPR)

• BUSINESS PROCESS - A standardized set of activities that accomplish a specific tasks, such as processing a customer's order.
• 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 ways it travels the road by moving from foot to horse and the horse to the car.
•  BPR looks at taking a different path, such as an airplane which ignore the road completely.

ENTERPRISE RESOURCE PLANNING

(ERP)

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

  Well , thats all for chapter 3 . Thanks for reading my blog :)