HIGHER GROUND CAN BE GAINED:

A recent survey by CSC, in conjunction with Supply Chain Management Review
magazine (Quinn, 2004), clearly documented that savings and improvements
are real for serious supply chain efforts, often reaching three to eight points of
new profits. This study, as well as ones conducted by AMR Research and other
major consultancies, also shows that the important savings (particularly those
related to revenue increase) are eluding most firms, which are still bogged down
in the early levels of the maturity and SCOR� models and not inclined to work
with external business partners.
We see an enormous possibility in such a context. The opportunity to use
supply chain as a driving force behind further performance enhancement, and
to move a firm into a position where the distinguishing feature is being solidly
linked in an intelligent value network, has become the means to reap the greatest
return from an end-to-end supply chain improvement effort. Internal obstacles
and cultural conflicts tend to be the greatest inhibitors to achieving such aposition,
the most important of which are good data management and overcoming
process difficulties.
Distancing an individual business from its competitors in areas of importance
in a market has long been the goal of most enterprises. The chance to
extend market leadership, however, and to gain a dominant position through the
application of collaboration and technology focused on customer satisfaction,
the key ingredients of the intelligent value network, is not so well known and
has never been greater � for those businesses willing to overcome normal
cultural barriers and the traditional unwillingness to work cooperatively with
external resources to cope with process problems.
This opportunity is achieved by linking together four topics of importance
to today�s businesses: supply chain management, customer relationship management,
technology application, and customer intelligence. The last topic is our
terminology for the acquisition, management, and integration of customer
knowledge in order to create a differentiating customer value proposition for
the whole extended enterprise. By looking holistically at these usually disparate
topics, companies can develop integrated strategies and solutions for delivering
products and services to key customers better than any competitors. When the
effort is extended through business process management techniques to include
willing and trusted business allies working across an extended enterprise for the
same purposes, the advantages are unmatched.