Supply Chain Management And Customer Relationship Management

Success for many organizations depends on the firm’s ability to balance product and process changes while exceeding customer expectations for improved cost delivery and quality. In lieu of these issues firms have started to implement principles of supply chain management. Supply chain management mainly involves managing the flow of incoming materials, manufacturing operations, and downstream distribution has to be in alignment that is responsive to change in customer demands eliminating a surplus of inventory.

Supply chain management is a practice that involves the planning, supervision, and implementation of strategies and controls to direct the movement of goods and services provided to customers. The intent of this essay is to incorporate a synopsis of existing literature and to provide the reader with a general understanding of how supply chain management correlates with the organizational design and structure of modern firms. The essay comprehensively reviews the components of supply chain management and their integration with functional areas within an organization. The information presented in this essay

Supply Chain Management (SCM) aims at integrating all corporate activities to improve relationships at all levels (internal operations, supplier networks, and distribution channel) to meet the competitive edge and satisfy the customer. In order to build an effective and complete business process that supports SCM, information among all business partners need to be shared. Information sharing through the Internet reduces the gap for business-to-business (B2B) commerce by enabling seamless integration with enterprise processes among partner corporations.

The group of firms that makes and delivers a given set of goods and services is known as a supply chain.

To start, Schroeder, R., Goldstein, S., and Rungtusanatham define supply chain as “the set of entities and relationships that cumulatively define materials and information flows both downstream toward the customer and upstream toward the very first supplier.” Schroeder, R., Goldstein, S., and Rungtusanatham goes on to identify supply chain management as “the design and management of seamless, value-added processes across organizational boundaries to meet the real needs of the end customer.” Organizations have to prepare themselves to the best of their ability in order to provide or their customers. Customers expect to receive the upmost service, regardless of the type of organization they make contact with.

* A company’s competitive position and profitability can be improved through the use of Supply Chain Management System (SCMS) which if successfully implemented will lead to exemplary customer service. (Oz, 2009)

Supply chain management has become an important issue in today’s business world, it is used by many companies to improve their competitive advantage (Vickery, Calantone & Droge, 1999). In a supply chain, the customer is the most impart part and seeing that every company seeks to please their customers, supply chain management therefore helps companies in satisfying the needs of the customer which involves the management of various aspects such as manufacturing, suppliers, transportation, information and retailers to deliver value to the customers (Chopra & Meindl, 2007).

The average company spends nearly half of every dollar it earns on production needs—goods and services it needs from external suppliers to keep producing. A supply chain consists of all parties involved, directly or indirectly, in the procurement of a product or raw material. 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.

Supply chain management is a complex undertaking that must involve more than one organization’s efforts to succeed. A tremendous amount of skill, time, and money must be present to build and develop relationships, discover and implement a strategy, and use the capabilities of the chain to build quality at an efficient financial rate. Allowing for these requirements, it leaves one to wonder whether supply chain management is a viable option. The answer is yes, because an organization needs a strong supply chain to compete and be profitable in the marketplace. The key points for supply chain management should be to meet customer demand, produce excellent customer value, enhance responsiveness to change, build a network that can resist risk, and develop financial success.

It is concluded that SCM is not yet a discipline and it is moving in the right direction. We can consider that SCM is an emerging discipline. If we look more closely at what is supply chain management and how is it being framed in research, there is much more common issues than there are differences. There is a common core of subjects taught in most supply chain management programs. There is a set of fairly well accepted standards by which a company’s supply chains are judged. There is widespread agreement that supply chain management is a philosophy or orientation of the way that organizations conduct business and that it is multidisciplinary in

Supply chain management places importance on managing the customer relationship, as well as the supplier relationship. By effectively managing these relationships, the company can become more competitive, while increasing the quality of the product to the customer. Placing emphasis on the supplier relationship and the businesses along the supply chain increases product efficiency and quality. The importance placed on the customer relationship focuses on the demands and needs of the customer. Through effective communication within the relationships along the supply chain, a basic balance of supply and demand is established.

model can endure the cost of usages, for instance, CRM (Customer Relationship Management), SCM (Supply Chain Management instrument). Computational execution is directly seen as an item,

Growing competition and escalation in customer demands have led business management to sophisticated information technology in order to effectively manage cost and productivity within operations. Alternate approaches to traditional management systems are working to improve and streamline business processes to meet those needs. Supply Chain Management (SCM) aims to facilitate the collaboration between the organization, its suppliers, the manufacturers, distributors, and the partners. Similarly, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) serves to enhance the relationship with customers and provide efficient management of customer-related information. Both SCM and CRM provide good data for business analytics, cost management, forecasting purposes, and adding to the bottom line. However, determining which system is most efficient depends entirely on the primary goal of the business, and can vary by application. Nonetheless, research concludes that both SCM and CRM are more valuable

Improvements in transportation process and technology enablement make available the most achievable way for most companies today to flush out supply chain costs and advance quality, reliability and customer satisfaction. Companies across nearly every industry sector are motivated to become supply chain management leaders. SCM leaders attain this rank in their markets by extensively dropping cycle times and operating expenses, increasing supply chain

steadily for the last few years and is now seen as the way forward for any