CHAPTER 3 : STRATERGIC INITIATIVES FOR IMPLEMENTING COMPETITIVE                                     ADVANTAGES


Organizations can undertake high-profile stratergic initiatives including :

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


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,

4 BASIC components of supply chain management include :

1. Supply chain stratergy - stratergy of managing all resources to meet customer demand.
2. Supply chain partner - partners throughout the supply chain that delivers 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 system can enable 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 efficiences 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 & retention & organization's profitability.

CRM can enable an organization to :

- identify types of customers
- design individual customer marketing campaigns
- understand customers buying behaviour



Business Process Reengineering

* Business Process means a standardized set of activities that accomplish a specific task , such as processing customer's orders.

* Business Process Reenginering means the analysis and redesign of workflow within and between entreprises.





Enterprise Resource Planning

* intergrates all departments and functions tthroughout an organization into a single IT system so that employees can make decisions by viewing enterprisewide info on all business operations.