Supply chain processes customer service management

It is not unusual for the actual shipment date to be a few days different from the original promised shipment date due to uncertainty in supply chain processes. However, this unreliability might not be acceptable to relationship-based customers. Therefore, Dell offers a special service through Dell Premier accounts at premier.dell.com for business and public sector customers. The service not only provides reports and tools to assist purchasing, asset management, and product support, but also allows customers to hook up their ERP/EDI systems with Dell s to perform real-time computer systems procurement. Through Premier accounts, Dell commits to more responsive and reliable order promising and fulfillment solutions for its relationship-based customers with support from advanced IT systems (see Kraemer and Dedrick 2001). 

Based on the characterization of a supply chain, supply chain management (SCM) can be defined as a process oriented approach to procuring, producing, and delivering end products and services to customers. It includes sub-suppliers, suppliers, internal operations, trade customers, retail customers and end users. It covers the management of materials, information, and fund flows [2],... 

Improved process efficiency Automation of order management More efficient supply chain management Better market transparency and improved process ciency Automation of order management Superior product selection tools Segment specific market information Customized value-added services ... 

Supply chains that burst to many tier 1 customers/suppliers will strain corporate resources and limit the number of process links the focal company can integrate and closely manage beyond tier 1. In general, managers in companies with immediately wide vertical structures actively manage only a few tier 2 customers or suppliers. Some companies have transferred servicing small customers to distributors, thus moving the small customers farther down in the supply chain from the focal company. This principle, known as functional spin-off, is described in the channels literature (Stem et al. 1996) and can be applied to the focal company s network of suppliers as well as to its customers. 

This is a process of tracking an order to try to find out where it is and when it can be expected to arrive at your facility. In order to reduce some of the costs at FedEx and UPS, tracking systems have been developed and made available to their customers so they are able to track their own packages when they need to and not rely on the customer service department at the shipping comparer. This has improved service and helped satisfy their customers much faster and better. I have observed companies that have entire departments whose responsibility is to follow shipments and expedite them as necessary so everything runs as platmed. This is a potentially expensive area that can be handled more effectively with proper supply chain management. 

Over the past 25 years, managers have learned to view their firms as a system of closely linked processes which deliver products and/or services to customers. Now managers are recognizing that their entire firm is just one link in a chain of firms whose purpose is to serve the customer. By increasing the integration of the entire supply chain, all the firms in the chain can increase their profits. 

One problem with this thinking is that it ignores the value of the activity system as described in Chapter 10. Activity systems are integrated processes designed to meet the needs of important customer segments. It could be that many mundane processes are important to their activity system and, by implication, their supply chains. In fact, Prahalad and Hamel maintain that many managers are ignorant of the deeper competencies at work in the development and delivery of their products and services to the marketplace. 

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