STRATEGIC INITIATIVE

• 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

• 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 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

• Effectiveness 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

• 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 goal that an organization must embrace on an enterprise wide 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 behaviours

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 purposes 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

FINDING OPPURTUNITY USING BPR

• A company can improve the way it travels the road by moving from foot to horse to car
• BPR looks at taking a different path, such as an airplane which ignore the road completely
• Types of change an organization can achieve, along with the magnitudes of change and the potential business benefit

ENTERPRISE RESOURCES PLANNING

• Enterprise resources planning (ERP) - 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
• Keyword in ERP is 'enterprise'
• ERP systems collect data from across an organization and correlates the data generating an enterprise wide view

OPENING CASE STUDY QUESTIONS
Apple - Merging Technology, Business, and Entertainment

     1. Evaluate how Apple can gain business intelligence through the implementation of a customer relationship management system        
     2. Create an argument against the following statement: 'Apple should not invest any resources to build a supply chain management system
     3. why would company like Apple invest in BPR?