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1.
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Identify and
briefly describe three major enterprise applications.
Supply chain
management systems help an organization better manage its supply chain,
including planning, sourcing, making, delivering, and returning items.
Supply chain management software can be categorized as a supply
chain planning system or as a supply chain execution system.
A supply chain planning system enables a firm to generate demand
forecasts for a product and to develop sourcing and manufacturing plans
for that product.
A supply
chain execution system manages the flow of products through distribution
centers and warehouses to ensure that products are delivered to the
right locations in the most efficient manner.
Supply chain management benefits include improved customer
service and responsiveness, cost reduction, and cash utilization.
Customer
relationship management systems help firms maximize the benefits of
their customer assets.
These systems capture and consolidate data from all over the
organization and then distribute the results to various systems and
customer touch points across the enterprise.
Customer relationship management systems can be classified as
operational or as analytical.
Operational CRM refers to customer-facing applications, such as
sales force automation, call center and customer service support, and
marketing automation.
Analytical CRM refers to customer relationship management applications
dealing with the analysis of customer data to provide information for
improving business performance.
Benefits include increased customer satisfaction, reduced direct
marketing costs, more effective marketing, and lower costs for customer
acquisition and retention.
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2.
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What is an
enterprise system? What is
enterprise software?
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3.
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(Evaluation)
What are the
benefits of enterprise systems?
What are the challenges of enterprise systems?
Benefits
include creating an enterprise-enabled organization, providing firmwide
knowledge-based management processes, providing a unified information
system technology platform and environment, and enabling more efficient
operations and customer-driven business processes.
Challenges include a daunting implementation process, surviving a
cost-benefit analysis, inflexibility, and realizing strategic value.
(Evaluation
in terms of assess, judge)
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4.
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Identify two
classifications for supply chain software.
For each classification, identify five capabilities.
Supply chain
planning systems and supply chain execution systems are two
classifications for supply chain software.
Supply chain planning systems enable a firm to generate demand
forecasts for a product and develop sourcing and manufacturing plans for
that product. Capabilities
include order planning, advanced scheduling and manufacturing planning,
demand planning, distribution planning, and transportation planning.
Supply chain execution systems manage the flow of products
through distribution centers and warehouses to ensure that products are
delivered to the right locations.
Capabilities include order commitments, final production,
replenishment, distribution management, and reverse distribution.
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5.
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Identify two
supply chain models. Which is better?
Push-based
and pull-based models were discussed in the textbook.
Push-based refers to a supply chain driven by production master
schedules based on forecasts or best guesses of demand for products.
Pull-based refers to a supply chain driven by actual customer
orders or purchases so that members of the supply chain produce and
deliver only what customers have ordered.
Pull-based models are better.
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6.
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Identify two
aspects of customer relationships management.
Operational
CRM and analytical CRM are two aspects.
Operational CRM refers to customer-facing applications, such as
sales force automation, call center and customer service support, and
marketing automation.
Analytical CRM refers to customer relationship management applications
dealing with the analysis of customer data to provide information for
improving business performance.
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7.
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Identify five
benefits of customer relationship management systems.
Benefits
include: better customer service, make call centers more efficient,
cross-sell products more effectively, help sales staff close deals
faster, simplify marketing and sales processes, acquire new profitable
customers, sell additional products and services, provide customer
information for developing new products, increase product utilization,
reduce sales and marketing costs, identify and retain profitable
customers, optimize service delivery costs, retain high-lifetime value
customers, improve customer loyalty, improve response rates to direct
mail, increase product profitability, respond quickly to market
opportunities.
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8.
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(Synthesis)
You have been
hired by Santori, Inc., a small company that imports and distributes an
Italian sparkling water. The company is interested in what benefits an
enterprise system would bring. Would an enterprise system be appropriate
for this company? What steps would you take in determining this?
An enterprise
system may be too expensive, although there are enterprise software
packages that are available to smaller companies. A hosted enterprise
application might be the most economical way to implement an enterprise
system. To determine whether this would be beneficial to Santori, I
would first look at their existing business processes. It would be ideal
to determine if their efficiency meets benchmarks in their industry and
allows them to be competitive with other businesses in their niche. Then
I would review existing hosted applications to see how the applications
business processes matched up with Santori’s. It would be important to
compare the costs of instituting new business processes with the
benefits and cost-savings.
(Synthesis in
terms of propose, plan)
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9.
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(Evaluation)
Plant Away is
an Oregon-based retailer and distributor of trees and shrubs. They have
hundreds of smaller nurseries based around the country that grow the
plant stock. The majority of their business is conducted online:
Consumers purchase typically small quantities of products online and
Plant Away coordinates the shipping from the most appropriate nursery.
What unique problems might you anticipate they have in their supply
chain? What might remedy these problems?
Typical
problems in supply chains arise from unforeseeable events. In a plant
nursery, variations in the weather, growing season, plant diseases, crop
output would be uncertainties. Other problems might be interstate
regulations governing plants allowed in different states, and making
sure plants survive and are healthy during transportation. It would be
very important to have up-to-date forecasting of the weather or growing
seasons that could anticipate possible problems, and analyze and
determine the best transportation routes.
(Evaluation
in terms of appraise, assess)
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10.
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(Evaluation)
You have been
hired by Croydon Visiting Nurse Services, whose business processes are
all manual, paper-based processes. How might a CRM system benefit them?
A CRM system
that includes patient’s health records would allow any nurse to take
over if another needed replacement. Assuming that the nurses had access
via laptops or other PDAs to the system, a new nurse would have instant
access to the patients needs. The CRM might also be able to record which
types of treatments or products customers were most interested in or
gave the greatest benefit to customers, and help anticipate needs.
Additionally, with PRM capabilities, products needed by the nursing
service would be more easily anticipated, ordered, and delivered. Since
the employees work in the field, or away from a central office,
Internet-based communications might provide tools for reviewing employee
performance.
(Evaluation
in terms of appraise, assess)
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