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 :)