Chapter 3 is about Strategic Initiatives for Implementing Competitive Advantages. This chapter introduces high-profile strategic initiatives that an organization can undertake to help it gain competitive advantage and business efficiencies. There are 4 strategic initiatives that the management can use which is:-

i)              Supply Chain Management

ii)             Customer Relationship Management

iii)            Business Process Reengineering

iv)           Enterprise Resource Planning

  Supply Chain Management  (SCM) is 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 :-

# supply chain strategy – the strategy for managing all the resources required to meet customer demand for all products and services.                                                                                                                                -for example: the company wants to sell “tudung fareeda” , then they should find all the resources such the cloth and the colour of cloth to fulfil the customer’s demand.

# supply chain partners – the partners chosen to deliver finished products, raw materials, and services including pricing, delivery, and payment processes along with partner relationship monitoring metrics.                                                                                                                                                     

-for example to make the hijab maybe some supplier just supply the thread and another supplier can supply cloth, so that they can combined their supplied and became a partner.

# supply chain operation – the schedule for production activities including testing, packaging, and preparation for delivery. Measurements for this component include productivity and quality.                           

-for example to produce the product, the company should have their own schedule to make the process of production can run smoothly.

# supply chain logistics – the product delivery processes and elements including orders, warehouses, carriers, defective product returns and invoicing.                                                          -this part is for all the product delivery such the transportation and to where the product has keep.

Effective and efficient supply chain management systems can enable an organization to:

Decrease	Organization’s Supply Chain	Supplier power
Buyer supplier
Threat of substitute products or services
Threat of new entrants		Increase

The buyer power decrease when they have less choices to buy a products or services. So, it can make a supplier power increase. Then, the threat of substitute products or services and threat of new entrants also decrease because the product that they sell is less competitors.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) involves managing all aspects of customer’s relationship with an organization to increase customer loyalty and retention and an organization’s profitability.

CRM allows an organization to gain customer’s shopping and buying behaviours to develop and implement enterprise wide strategy.

CRM is occurs anywhere such as Aeon shopping centre, Perodua and etc.                                                              For example is someone has send their car to Perodua to service it, then after finish and he already back home. Then the Perodua call him to get the feedback from their services.

CRM allows us to communicate effectively with each customer and understand customer product and sevice.

CRM strategy:-

According to Michael Boyd director at Eddied Bauer, said that CRM is a business strategy to try to optimize profitability, revenue, and satisfaction at an individual customer level.

CRM is not just technology , but also a strategy that an organization must embrace on an enterprise level.

CRM system also allos an organization to treat customers as individuals, gaining important insights into their buying preferences and behavior and leading to increase sales, greater profitability, and higher rate of customers loyalty.

Business Process Reengineering (BPR) :-

Business process is a standardized set of activities that accomplish a specific task, such as processing a customer’s order.

Business Process Reengineering (BPR) is the analysis and redesign of workflow within and between enterprises.

Organize around outcome not task	7 PRINCIPLE	Treat geographically dispersed resources as though they were centralized
Identify all the organization’s processes and prioritize them in order of redesign urgency		Link parallel activities in the workflow instead of just integrating their results.
		Put the decision point where the is performed, and bulid control into the process.
Integrate information processing work into the real work that produces the information		Capture information once and at the source.

Finding Opportunity Using BPR

Companies frequently strive to improve their business processes by performing tasks faster, cheaper, and better. A company could improve the way that it travels the road by moving from foot to horse and then from horse to car.

Creating values for the customers is the leading factor for instituling BPR, and information technology often plays an important enabling role.

Pitfalls Of BPR

One hazard of BPR is that the company becomes a wrapped up in fighting its own demons that it fails to keep up with its competitors in offering new products or services.

4) Enterprise Resource Planning

-ERP integrates all departments and functions throughout an organization into a single IT system.

-ERP system helps an organization to obtain operational efficiencies, lower costs, improve supplier and customer relations, and increase revenues and market share.

-The heart of an ERP system is a central database information from and feeds information into all the ERP system's individual application components (called modules), supporting diverse business function such as accounting, manufacturing, marketing, and human resources.

 ERP System

 An enterprise resource planning system, or ERP, gives businesses an information technology tool that combines and integrates the various information systems it uses into one comprehensive system to manage operations. An ERP typically includes finance and accounting, human resources, supply chain and inventory, and manufacturing information systems. Its purpose is to facilitate the flow of information among all departments in an organization, and manage data sharing with outside systems, such as suppliers, business partners, clients and regulatory agencies.

#ERP solutions were developed to deliver automation across multiple units of an organization, to help facilitate the manufacturing process and address issues issues such as raw materials, inventory ,order, entry and distribution.

#ERP is the combination for all Supply Chain Management (SCM), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and Business Process Reengineering (BPR).

That all for chapter 3, Thank You :)

  

CHAPTER 2 : Identifying Competitive Advantages

Assalamualikum,,,,This second chapter is explained about Identifying Competitive Advantages...... 

~What is competitive advantages?

   * A product or service that an organization's customer place a greater value on than similar offerings from a       competitor.

   * Unfortunately, CA is temporary because competitors keep duplicate the strategy.

   * Then, the company should start the new competitive advantage.

   * To attract people to buy our products or services.

Competitive intelligence is the process of gathering information about the competitive environment, including competitor's plans, activities and products to improve a company's ability to succeed.

Managers use three common tools to analyze competitive intelligence and develop competitive advantages including:

   * The Five Forces 

   * The Three Generic Strategies

   * Value Chain Analysis

 1) The Five Forces :-

      Michael Porter analyzes the competitive forces within the environment in which a company operates to assess the potential for profitability.

# Buyer Power

 . If buyer power high, customers can force a company and its competitors to compete on price, which             typically drives price down. 

 . to reduce buyer power by switching cost and loyalty programs. 

 . eg: used loyalty programs (Tesco card - being a members to get discount)

# Supplier Power

  . The suppliers ability to influence the prices they charge for supplies.

  . If supplier power is high, the supplier can influence the industry by:

      -charging higher prices

      -Limiting quality or services

      -shifting cost to industry participants.

# Threat of New Entrance

  . is high when there are many alternatives to a product or service

  . then the company should practices best IT than other company.

# Threat of Substitute

  . to extent that customers can use different products to fulfill the same need, the threat of substitute exists.

  . For an example is electronic product with same function but different brands.

  . Furthermore, switching cost to a cheaper one can make customer attract to buy the product.

#  Rivalry among existence competitors 

   . high when competition to enter a market 

   . So, the company must do something different that can make customers more attracted.

   . For instance is a new bank must offers online paying bills.

2)  The Three Generics Strategies 

  i- Cost leadership 

   ~becoming a low-cost producer in the industry allows the company to lower prices customers.

   ~competitors with higher costs cannot afford to compete with the low-costs leader price.

  ii- Differentiation

   ~create competitive advantage by distinguish their products on one or more features important to their            customers.

   ~Example is i-care by Proton

 iii) Focused strategy

   ~Target to a niche market

   ~Concentrate on either cost leadership or differentiation.

   

3) Value Chain

~to identify these competitive advantages, Michael Porter created value chain analysis, which views a firm as   a series of business processes that each add value to the product or service.

                       

That all for today,, thank you :)

CHAPTER 1 : Business Driven Technology

Assalamualikum,, today I was learning about business driven technology, is all about the important of technology in our daily life.

As we know all people or an organization needs a technology to support their work became easy and fast. Actually management can be defined as manage by (4S) which is Man (people), Machine, Money and Material to achieve goals. On the other hand, Man as a people who is drive the business, Machine as a technology that we use to make the process of a business data make easier, Money as a capital to start or to make a business running smoothly and then the materials as a asset or the things that we want to sell or running a business.

Business Driven Technology also explain about the differentiation between Information technology (IT) and Management information systems (MIS) :- 

~Information Technology is a the use of technology such application of computers and telecommunications equipment to store, retrieve, and manipulate data often in context of a business.                                           ~Management information systems (MIS) is a business function and academic discipline covering application of people, technologies, and procedures to solve business problems.

   Actually, the technology was useful in the business operations such as Customer Service, Finance, Sales Marketing, IT Operations, Operations Management, HR, and Security. This business cannot operate very well without the helping from the technology, we cannot type or search a million name, job or anything by hand but with the technology, the information will written and quickly sought. For instance: Ali wants to book a hotel in Langkawi early for the upcoming holiday season. Then, he was telephone the service centre to book it. So the service centre was check if there any available room and set up one room for Ali as already booked. Furthermore, this story is shown to how the technology helps humans everyday such as Ali use a telephone to call the service centre, then the service centre use the computer to search any data.

            The information technology basics is beginning by 3 steps :-

11)      Data : raw facts that describe the characteristic of an event.

22)      Information : data converted into a meaningful and useful context.

33)      Business intelligence : applications and technologies that are used to support decision-                         making efforts.

#Then the information will included into a technology systems such as excel and etc.

            Moreover, in this chapter also I have learning about 4 IT Cultures :-

11)      Information-Functional Culture

~Employees use information as a means of exercising influence or power over others.

22)      Information-Sharing Culture

~Employees across departments trust each other to use information ( especially about problems and failures) to improve performance.

33)      Information-Inquiring Culture

~Employees across departments search for information to better understand the future and align themselves with current trends and new directions.

44)      Information-Discovery Culture

~Employees across departments are open to new insights about crisis and radical changes and seek ways to create competitive advantage.

That a summary from chapter 1 that I have learning :) .......