Best-Practive Integrated Supply Chain Management

1328 Words6 Pages
Best-Practice Integrated Supply Chain Management and its Competitive Advantage Survival of companies in today’s economy requires continuous process innovation. Firms often seek competitive advantage through product features, price, promotion, and advertising, while failing to see the value of an exceptional service operations system. It is best-practice integrated supply chain management that enhances the firm’s marketing effortts to create competitive advantage. Supply chain management is rare in today’s business organizations because of its complexity, but its process intricacy makes it difficult for competitors to replicate a successful system. Supply chain management is the complex process of managing systems to ensure that products are where they should be when they should be there, while minimizing costs and creating opportunities for profit. It is the strategic linkage and collaboration of all departments in a firm that enhances the product flow through the firm, which eventually adds value to the customer. Firms can lower costs, positively differentiate their services, constantly perform value-added services, increase flexibility and responsiveness, and engage in constant process innovation by incorporating best-practice supply chain management into their system. Not all supplier-buyer relationships are equal in value, and therefore, it is important to segment customers based on service needs and develop the appropriate relationship for that particular requirement. Robert J. Trent discusses four types of relationship management in his article “Why Relationships Matter.” Counterproductive relationships have no value because each organization is working against the other, this is often called a lose-lose relationship. Competitive or win-lose relationships compete over a fixed value. The competitive relationship is often used when the buyer has

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