Johannesburg, 28 Oct 2004
Manufacturers are no longer the drivers of the supply chain, managing the pace at which products are manufactured and distributed. Nowadays, customers call the shots, causing manufacturers to scramble to meet their demands for options, styles, features, quick order fulfilment and rapid delivery. Consequently, customer relationship management (CRM) remains one of the key differentiators in the supply chain.
Paul Whalley, managing director of IFS South Africa, believes companies that learn how to improve the management of their supply chain in favour of their customers will become the new success stories in the global marketplace.
"The company that interacts innovatively with its customers and finds the most attractive way to take its product to market is the one that will gain an edge over its competitors."
This is in line with recent research done by Meta Group, which states that a sound, future-looking CRM application and technology strategy (tied to a CRM business plan) is a prerequisite for success.
"Although portals are not a new market, they are increasingly overlapping with CRM initiatives," the report continues. "Many of our clients are exploring portals to enable a single, integrated agent desktop in CRM initiatives focused on the contact centre (as opposed to customising one specific application to act as the single desktop). Seven years ago, monolithic two-tier client/server-packaged applications were the norm. Currently, Web-oriented, n-tier architectures have become common, albeit with proprietary elements under the covers."
Whalley echoes this sentiment, adding that developments around the Internet and associated technology have raised the importance of enabling integration between several different internal and external sources of information to maintain good relationships with customers.
"Organisations have to transform their supply chain from being internally focused on the product to one that centres around customers, suppliers and partners external to the organisation. This requires an integrated information system that can transcend the organisation`s internal manufacturing boundaries to customers and suppliers so that it becomes an extended enterprise. As customers` requirements are relayed via an integrated supply chain through to the manufacturing environment, organisations involved in the supply chain become interdependent to ensure that each customer`s specific requirements are satisfactorily met."
"Additionally, as the customer`s dominance in the supply chain increases the organisation soon begins to derive competitive advantage from the supply chain as opposed to the manufacturing process. Thus the supply chain becomes the competitive differentiator."
According to Whalley, a CRM process can only deliver real benefits if the front and backend systems are fully integrated with one another. "The various elements of the CRM process must form a coherent whole that is in accordance with the objectives of the underlying CRM strategy. These include analysing customer and channel structure, attracting customers, presenting the company`s products and services, selling, order management, fulfilment, customer support and after-market service."
Whalley says Internet technology has also made the extended enterprise far more accessible to smaller organisations, enabling them to have remote partners, suppliers and customers that can log onto their system via the Web.
"Internet technology even allows the one-person operation to be part of the extended supply chain. What`s more, it does not require a huge capital outlay.
"Additionally, software that offers a non-stop solution to the challenges of bridging the gaps in supply chains can help organisations move outwards to their external value chains and enable them to streamline operations. Thus the supply chain becomes easier to plan, execute and evaluate, resulting in faster return on investment and happier, more loyal and satisfied customers," he concludes.
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