15 January 2016

CHAPTER 3 STRATEGIC INITIATIVES FOR IMPLEMENTING COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGES

STRATEGIC INITIATIVES

  • Organization can undertake high-profits strategic initiatives including:


SUPPLE 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 include;
o  Supply chain strategy – strategy for managing all resources to meet customers demand.
 Supply chain partner – partners throughout the supply chain that deliver finished products, raw materials and services.
Supply chain operation – schedule for production activities.
o  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.

  •  Wal-Mart and Procter & Gambler (P&G) SCM


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 goals that an organization must embrace on an enterprisewide level.
  •  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.

CRM Overview.

BUSINESS PROCESS REENGINEERING
  • 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.

Reengeneering the Cooperation - book written by Micheal Hammer and James Champy

The process of Re-engeneering

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.

  •  Progressive Insurance Mobile Claims Process.

 
  • The Benefits and Magnitude of Change.



ENTERPRISE RESOURCE 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 enterprise wide view


niaathirah xx

14 January 2016

CHAPTER 2 IDENTIFYING COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGES.

Hello there, last week I had learned a new chapter, it is about competitive advantage. Competitive Advantage is more like how we gain profit, how our company need to  competitive with another company and many  more. Let's find out more about this interesting chapter :) Yehaaaa!

WHAT IS COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE:

  • Competitive Advantage is a product or service that an organization's customers lace a greater value on the similar from competitor.
  • It is temporary because competitors keep duplicate the strategy.
  • First-mover Advantage is occurs when an organization can meaningfully impact its market shareby being first to market with a competitive advantage.


  • There are three common tools used in industry to analyze and develop:
    1. Porter's Five Forces Model
    2. Porter's Three Generic Strategies
    3. Value Chains

    THE FIVE FORCES MODEL - Evaluating Business Segments.
    Porter's Five Forces Model determines the relative attractiveness of an industry (Have their own calculate)
    1.  BUYER POWER 
    > High when buyers have many choices.
    > Low when their choices are few.

    Way to reduce buyer power is through Loyalty Program & Switching Costs.
    • Loyalty Program: rewards customers based on the amount of business.
    • Switching Costs: costs that can make customer reluctant to switch to another product or services.
       2.   SUPPLIER POWER 

    High when buyers have few choices of whom to buy.
    > Low when their choices are many ( Have many supplier )

    Supply Chain consists of all parties involvedin the sale of product or raw material.

    Supplier power is the converse of buyer power.
    Best practices of IT to create competitive advantage: B2B marketplace, private exchange allow a single buyer to posts it needs and then open the bidding to any supplier who would care to bid. Reverse auction is an auction format in which increasingly lower bids.

      3.  THREAT OF SUBSTITUTE PRODUCT OR SERVICES

    > High when there are many alternatives to a product or service.

    > Low when there are few alternatives from which to choose.

    > Ideally, an organization would like to be on a market in which there a few substitutes of their product or services.

    > Best practices of IT: Electronic product- same function different brands.
    • Threat of new entrants: High when it is easy for new competitors to enter a merket. Entry Barrier is a product feature that customers have to expect from organizations in a particular. 
      4.  RIVALRY AMONG EXISTING COMPETITORS 

    > High when competition is fierce in a market.
    > Low when competition is more complacent
    > Best practice IT: Wal Mart and its suppliers using IT enabled system for communication and track product at aisles by effective tagging system.
    > Reduce cost by using effective supply chain.

    THE THREE GENERIC STRATEGIES - Creating a Business Focus


    Follow one of Porter's Three Generic Strategies when entering a new market.
     VALUE CREATION




    > Supply chain: a chain or series of process that adds value to product and service for customer.
    > Add value to its products and services that support a profit margin for the firm.

    • Customers determine the extent to which each activity adds value to the product or service.
    • The Competitive Advantage is to:
    1. Target high value-adding activities to further enhance their value.
    2. Target low value-adding activities to increase their value
    3. Perform some combination of two.
    niaathirah xx