8 Enterprise Applications: Achieving Operational Excellence and Customer Intimacy Flashcards
What are enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems?
- Suite of integrated software modules and a common central database.
- Collects data from many divisions of firm for use in nearly all of firm’s internal business activities.
- Information entered in one process is immediately available for other processes.
How do enterprise systems work?
Built around thousands of predefined business processes that reflect best practices. • Finance and accounting • Human resources • Manufacturing and production • Sales and marketing
What is the business value of enterprise systems?
- Increase operational efficiency
- Provide firm-wide information to support decision making
- Enable rapid responses to customer requests for information or products
- Include analytical tools to evaluate overall organisational performance and improve decision-making
What is a supply chain?
Network of organisations and processes for:
• Procuring materials
• Transforming materials into products
• Distributing the products
What different kinds of supply chains are there?
- Upstream supply chain
- Downstream supply chain
- Internal supply chain
What can happen if there are inefficiencies in the supply chain management?
Inefficiencies cut into a company’s operating costs.
• Can waste up to 25 percent of operating expenses
What is the just-in-time strategy?
- Components arrive as they are needed.
* Finished goods shipped after leaving assembly line.
What is safety stock?
- Buffer for lack of flexibility or uncertainties in supply chain.
What is the bullwhip effect?
Information about product demand gets distorted as it passes from one entity to next across supply chain.
What are some causes and solutions of the bullwhip effect?
- Price fluctuations -> everyday low prices/low fluctuating prices.
- Order batching -> Frequent ordering
- Shortage gaming -> Forecast on sales history
- Forecast inaccuracies -> Information sharing
What do supply chain planning systems do?
- Model existing supply chain
- Enable demand planning
- Optimise sourcing, manufacturing plans
- Establish inventory levels
- Identify transportation modes
What do supply chain execution systems do?
• Manage flow of products through distribution centres and warehouses
What are some global supply chain issues?
- Greater geographical distances, time differences
- Participants from different countries
- Different performance standards
- Different legal requirements
What areas does the internet help manage global complexities?
- Warehouse management
- Transportation management
- Logistics
- Outsourcing
What is the push-based model (build-to-stock) supply chain?
- Earlier SCM systems
* Schedules based on best guesses of demand.
What is the pull-based model (demand-driven) supply chain?
- Web-based
* Customer orders trigger events in supply chain
What role does the internet have in supply chains?
- Internet enables move from sequential supply chains to concurrent supply chains.
- Complex networks of suppliers can adjust immediately.
What is the business value of supply chain management systems?
- Match supply to demand
- Reduce inventory levels
- Improve delivery service
- Speed product time to market
- Use assets more effectively
- Total supply chain costs can be 75 percent of operating budget
- Increase sales
What is customer relationship management?
- Knowing the customer
* In large businesses, too many customers and too many ways customers interact with firm.
What do customer relationship management systems do?
- Capture and integrate customer data from all over the organisation
- Consolidate and analyse customer data
- Distribute customer information to various systems and customer touch points across enterprise
- Provide single enterprise view of customers
What is the business value of CRM systems?
- Increased customer satisfaction
- Reduced direct-marketing costs
- More effective marketing
- Lower costs for customer acquisition/retention
- Increased sales revenue
What is a churn rate?
- Number of customers who stop using or purchasing products or services from a company
- Indicator of growth or decline of firm’s customer base
What are some challenges of enterprise applications?
- Highly expensive to purchase and implement enterprise applications
- Technology changes
- Business process changes
- Organisational learning, changes
- Switching costs, dependence on software vendors
- Data standardisation, management, cleansing
What are some next-generation enterprise applications?
- Social CRM
- Business Intelligence
What is Social CRM?
- Incorporating social networking technologies
- Company social networks
- Monitor social media activity; social media analytics
- Manage social and web-based campaigns
What is business intelligence?
- Inclusion of BI with enterprise applications
* Flexible reporting, ad hoc analysis, “what-if” scenarios, digital dashboards, data visualisation
What is enterprise software built around?
Built around thousands of predefined business processes that reflect best practices.
What is the upstream portion of the supply chain?
Refers to a company’s suppliers, the suppliers’ suppliers, and the processes for managing relationships with them.
What is middleware?
Enables a company to tailor a particular aspect of enterprise software to the way a company does business.
What is the downstream portion of the supply chain.?
Distribution and delivery of products to retailers.
