Strategic Initiatives for Implementing Competitive Advantages.

STRATEGIC INITIATIVES

1. 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.

---> 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 include:

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 logistics – product delivery process

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

# 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:

* Identify types of customers

* Design individual customer marketing campaigns

* Treat each customer as an individual

* 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

•Reengineering the Corporation – book written by Michael Hammer and James Champy that recommends seven principles for BPR

ENTERPRISE RESORCE PLANNING

- 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.

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