Over the last decade businesses have come to realize how important it is to totally integrate business processes across the enterprise. In today’s fast-paced world, managing information assets is more important than ever before. This chapter discusses how important it is for information to be available in every nook and cranny of an enterprise.
Done correctly, enterprise systems can offer big rewards; done incorrectly can cause a company huge headaches, loss of business, employee turmoil, and wasted dollars. Changes in an enterprise system can be tremendous:
· A more uniform organization: more disciplined approach to business regardless of physical location or organization structure.
· More efficient operations and customer-driven business processes: focus more on the customer.
· Management: improved management decisions, a comprehensive view of performance.
Enterprise systems force a company to fully integrate all business processes. The changes helps the company automate many of the steps in the process instead of having to do everything manually.
Oh, for the days when the old saying “the customer is the king” was just a catch phrase. Now, it’s an absolute reality and companies that don’t live up to the phrase will pay for it. There are no more separate entities or distinct line in the sand when it comes to integrating supply chains. It’s more like shifting sand.
Supply chain planning systems can provide information up and down the chain and help everyone involved do a better forecasting job. It enables companies to: generate demand forecasts, develop sourcing and manufacturing plans, share information about changes easier and faster, coordinate activities with supply chain partners, and develop better demand planning.
The goals of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Systems are to optimize revenue, profitability, customer satisfaction, and customer retention. Many companies are overloaded with data about customers. CRM systems are utilized to consolidate this information and then provide it to the customer touch points. By offering a consolidated viewpoint of the customer to these touch points; a company can cater to the customer that offers the most profitability.
Developing and using metrics to measure the effectiveness of implementing supply chain management systems is very important. One of the most important metrics is the customer lifetime value (CLTV). Again, the CLTV is information that helps determine the profitability of a customer.
The return on investment to companies that implement enterprise systems can be enormous in terms of better information to suppliers, employees, customers, and business partners. Management challenges will be a rough ride: daunting implementation, high up-front costs and future benefits, inflexibility, and realizing strategic value.
All the challenges of implementing a new enterprise system are directly related to people; many companies fail to understand this fact.
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