Chapter 8: LO8.6 List and describe the five components of a typical supply chain.

The five basic supply chain management components are plan, source, make, deliver, and return. Plan is the strategic portion because a company must have a plan for managing all the resources that go toward meeting customer demand for products or services. A big piece of planning is developing a set of metrics to monitor the supply chain so that it is efficient, costs less, and delivers high quality and value to customers. Source deals with a companys ability to choose reliable suppliers that will deliver goods and services required for making products. They also need to develop a set of pricing, delivery, and payment processes with suppliers and create metrics for monitoring and improving the relationships. Make is the step where companies manufacture their products or services. This is the most metric-intensive portion of the supply chain, measuring quality levels, production output, and worker productivity. The deliver step is also referred to as logistics because it is the set of processes that plans for and controls the efficient and effective transportation and storage of suppliers from suppliers to customers. During this step, companies must be able to receive orders from customers, fulfill the orders via a network of warehouses, pick transportation companies to deliver the products, and implement a billing and invoicing system to facilitate payments. The last and most problematic step is return. Companies must create a network for receiving defective and excess products and support customers who have problems with delivered products.

Chapter 9: LO9.6 Explain the problem associated with business intelligence. And describe the solution to this busines problem. Business intelligence refers to applications and technologies that are used to gather, provide access to, and analyze data and information to support decision-making efforts. The problem with this is data rich, information poor. As businesses increase their reliance on enterprise systems such as CRM, they are rapidly accumulating vast amounts of data. As a result of this large amount of data being generated, information has to be requested from different departments or IT, who must dedicate staff to pull together various reports. Responses can take weeks, by which time the information may be outdated. The challenge is to transform data into useful information. The solution to this problem is business intelligence. To improve the quality of business decisions, managers can provide existing staff with BI systems and tools that can assist them in making better, more informed decisions. The result creates an agile intelligent enterprise. Chapter 10: LO10.10 Evaluate the advantages of using a workflow management system. A workflow defines all the steps or business rules, from beginning to end, required for a business process. Therefore, workflow management systems facilitate the automation and management of business processes and control the movement of work through the business process. There are many advantages of using a workflow management system. Workflow management systems allow management to schedule individual systematic claim reviews without disrupting the investigation. It can also see the entire claim process graphically and determine bottlenecks.

8.7 Information technologys primary role in SCM is creating the integrations or tight process and information linkages between functions within a firm and between the firms, which allow the smooth, synchronized flow of both information and product between customers, suppliers, and transportation providers across the supply chain. Information technology integrates planning,

decision-making processes, business operating processes, and information sharing for business performance management. 8.8 The four factors driving supply chain management are visibility, consumer behavior, competition and speed. Visibility is the ability to view all areas up and down the supply chain. Consumer behavior has changed the way businesses compete because customers will leave if a company doesnt continually meet their expectations. Companies need to be able to give customers exactly what they want, and know when and how they want it. Supply chain management software can be broken into supply chain planning software and supply chain execution software; both increase a companys ability to compete. Speed has been a high focus during the past decade. This is mainly because of new forms of servers, telecommunications, wireless applications, and software are enabling companies to perform activities that were once never thought possible. It is important for companies to have the ability to satisfy continually changing customer requirements efficiently, accurately, and quickly. Timely and accurate information is very critical to businesses. 8.9 To succeed in todays competitive markets, companies must align their supply chains with the demands of the markets they serve. Supply chain measurements can cover many areas including procurement, production, distribution, warehousing, inventory, transportation, and customer service. A supply chain is only as strong as its weakest link. The solution is to measure all key areas of the supply chain. These areas are back order, customer order promised cycle time, customer order actual cycle time, inventory replenishment cycle time, and inventory turns. 9.1 Customer relationship management involves managing all aspects of a customers relationship with an organization to increase customer loyalty and retention and an organizations profitability. Operational CRM supports traditional transactional processing for day-to-day front-office operations or systems that deal with the customers. Analytical CRM, on the other hand, supports back-office operations and strategic analysis and includes all systems that do not deal directly with the customers. The main difference between the two is the direct interaction between the organization and its customers. 9.2 For an organization to find its most valuable customers, they must follow a formula for organization called Recency, Frequency, and Monetary value. Recency is tracking how recently a customer purchased items. Frequency is how frequent a customer purchases an item. Lastly, monetary value is how much a customer spends on each purchase. Once a company has all this information, they can compile it to identify patterns and create marketing campaigns, sales promotions, and services to increase business. 9.3 The three primary operational CRM technologies a marketing department can implement to increase customer satisfaction are list generator, campaign management, cross-selling and upselling. List generators compile customer information from a variety of sources and segment the information for different marketing campaigns. Campaign management systems guide users through marketing campaigns performing such tasks as campaign definition, planning, scheduling, segmentation, and success analysis. Two key sales strategies a marketing campaign can deploy are cross-selling and up-selling. Cross-selling is selling additional products or services to a customer. Up-selling is increasing the value of the sale. 9.4 The three primary operational CRM technologies a sales department can implement to increase customer satisfaction are sales management CRM systems, contact management CRM systems, and opportunity management CRM systems. Sales management CRM systems automate each phase of the sales process, helping individual sales representatives coordinate and organize all of their accounts. A contact management CRM system maintains customer contact information and identifies prospective customers for future sales. This includes such features as maintaining

organizational charts, detailed customer notes, and supplemental sales information. Opportunity management CRM systems target sales opportunities by finding new customers or companies for future sales. These systems determine potential customers and competitors and define selling efforts including budgets and schedules. 9.5 Customer relationship management involves managing all aspects of a customers relationship with an organization to increase customer loyalty and retention and an organizations profitability. Supplier relationship management focuses on keeping suppliers satisfied by evaluating and categorizing suppliers for different projects, which optimizes supplier selection. SRM applications help companies analyze vendors based on a number of key variables including strategy, business goals, prices, and markets. Partner relationship management focuses on keeping vendors satisfied by managing alliance partner and reseller relationships that provide customers with the optimal sales channel. PRMs business strategy is to select and manage partners to optimize their long-term value to an organization. Employee relationship management provides employees with a subset of CRM applications available through a web browser. Many of the ERM applications assist the employee in dealing with customers by providing detailed information on company products, services, and customer orders. 9.7 Data mining is the process of analyzing data to extract information not offered by the raw data alone. The three common forms of data-mining analysis are cluster analysis, association detection, and statistical analysis. Cluster analysis is a technique used to divide an information set into mutually exclusive groups such that the members of each group are as close together as possible to one another and the different groups are as far apart as possible. This is frequently used to segment customer information for customer relationship management systems to help organizations identify customers with similar behavioral traits. Association detection reveals the degree to which variables are related and the nature and frequency of these relationships in the information. Many people refer to association detection algorithms as association rule generators because they create rules to determine the likelihood of events occurring together at a particular time or following each other in a logical progression. Statistical analysis performs such functions as information correlations, distributions, calculations, and variance analysis. 9.8 The three forms of BI to work toward a common goal are strategic, operational, and tactical. Strategic BI helps with planning, and results in marketing campaign. Operational BI helps with immediate actions and results in sales revenue. Tactical BI helps with daily analysis and results in refined campaign. 9.9 With the successful implementation of BI systems an organization can expect to receive single point of access to information for all users, BI across organizational departments, and up-to-theminute information for everyone. With BI solution, organizations can unlock information held within their databases by giving authorized users a single point of access to data. All departments across an organization can benefit from the value of BI. The key to unlocking information is to give users the tools to quickly and easily find immediate answers to their questions. Some users want dynamic access to information. 9.10 The four categories of BI business benefits are quantifiable benefits, indirectly quantifiable benefits, unpredictable benefits, and intangible benefits. Quantifiable benefits include working time saved in producing reports, and selling information to suppliers. Indirectly quantifiable benefits can be evaluated through indirect evidence. Unpredictable benefits are the result of discoveries made by creative users. Intangible benefits include improved communication throughout the enterprise, improved job satisfaction of empowered users, and improved knowledge

sharing. Intangible benefits include improved communication throughout the enterprise, improved job satisfaction of empowered users, and improved knowledge sharing.

10.1 Core enterprise resource planning are the traditional components included in most ERP systems and they primarily focus on internal operations. On the other hand, extended ERP components are the extra components that meet the organizational needs not covered by the core components and primarily focus on external operations. Between the two ERP systems, they cover everything internal and external. 10.2 The core ERP components are accounting and finance, production and materials management, and human resources. The accounting and finance ERP components manage accounting data and financial processes within the enterprise with functions such as general ledger, accounts payable, accounts receivable, budgeting, and asset management. Production and materials management ERP components handle the various aspects of production planning and execution such as demand forecasting, production scheduling, job cost accounting, and quality control. Lastly, human resources ERP components track employee information including payroll, benefits, compensation, and performance assessment, and assure compliance with the legal requirements of multiple jurisdictions and tax authorities. 10.3 The extended ERP components are business intelligence, customer relationship management, supply chain management, and Ebusiness. Business intelligence typically collects the information used throughout the organization, organize it, and apply analytical tools to assist managers with decisions. Customer relationship management involves managing all aspects of a customers relationship with an organization to increase customer loyalty and retention and an organizations profitability. Supply chain management involves the management of information flows between and among stages in a supply chain to maximize total supply chain effectiveness and profitability. Ebusiness means conducting business on the Internet, not only buying and selling, but also serving customers and collaborating with business partners. 10.4 Integration of supply chain management, customer relationship management, and enterprise resource planning systems is the key to success for companies. Integration allows the unlocking of information to make it available to any user, anywhere, anytime. Once a company integrates all these applications, ERP system, customers and trading partners have a single, consistent, and integrated view of the company. 10.5 The balanced scorecard is a management system, in addition to a measurement system, that enables organizations to clarify their vision and strategy and translate them into action. It provides feedback around both the internal business processes and external outcomes in order to continuously improve strategic performance and results. It views organizations from four perspectives. The perspectives are learning and growth, internal business process, customer, and financial. From these perspectives, users should develop metrics, collect data, and analyze their business. 10.6 A company can use technology to collaborate. A collaboration system is an IT-based set of tools that supports the work of teams by facilitating the sharing and flow of information. Some ways they use technology to collaborate include telecommunicating, online meetings, remote projects, and deploying applications. 10.7 Collaboration systems fall into one of two categories. First is unstructured collaboration. This includes document exchange, shared whiteboards, discussion forums, and email. These functions

can improve personal productivity, reducing the time spent searching for information or chasing answers. The second category is structured collaboration. This category involves shared participation in business processes, such as workflow, in which knowledge is hard-coded as rules. This is beneficial in terms of improving automation and the routing of information. 10.8 A knowledge management system supports the capturing, organization, and dissemination or knowledge throughout an organization. The organization determines what qualifies as knowledgeable information. This information is put into one of two categories: explicit knowledge or tacit knowledge. Explicit knowledge consists of anything that can be documented, archived, and codified, often with the help of IT. Tacit knowledge is the knowledge contained in peoples heads. It is difficult for companies to figure out how to recognize, generate, share, and manage this type of knowledge. Shadowing and joint problem solving are the best two practices for transferring or recreating tactic knowledge. Shadowing deals with less experienced staff observing the more experienced staff to learn how their more experienced counterparts approach their work. With joint problem solving, the expert and the novice work hand in hand on a task. 10.9 Content management system provides tools to manage the creation, storage, editing, and publication of information in a collaborative environment. An example of this is as website growing in size and complexity forcing a business to establish procedures to ensure that things run smoothly. The content management system marketplace is complex, incorporating document management, digital asset management, and web content management.

10.11 Groupware is software that supports the team interaction and dynamics including calendaring, scheduling, and videoconferencing. Businesses can use this technology to communicate, cooperate, coordinate, solve problems, compete, or negotiate. Groupware system advantages include facilitating communication, enabling telecommuting, reducing travel costs, sharing expertise, forming groups with common interests where it would not be possible to gather a sufficient number of people face-to-face, saving time and cost in coordinating group work, and facilitating group problem solving.