Customer Relationship Management in Supply Chain management & Quality Control

Prepared by:Anjani Manbansh Arvind Kothari Lalit Kumar Sandeep Singh Vishal Anand 60 43 51 76 02

PGDBA-Marketing Chetanas Institute of Management & Research

What Exactly Is CRM?

The first thing you find when looking into the world of Customer Relationship Management is the number of different definitions in use today. "CRM is the business strategy that aims to understand, anticipate, manage and personalize the needs of an organization's current and potential customers". From this we can learn that CRM is more than just a piece of software; CRM is a business strategy, one that puts the customer at the heart of the business. Thats nothing new I hear you say, and you would be right. Good business people have always understood the relationship between happy customers that come back again and again and creating long term, sustainable profitability. You just have to think of the local shop owner who knew everyone of his customers names, birthdays and particular ailments to prove that point. What is new is that there now exists the technology to enable this customer-centricity on a much larger scale. It is said that a successful CRM implementation will allow your Customer Service, Sales and Marketing people (and anyone else in your organization) to have a holistic view of each and everyone of your customers. In theory this will enable them to make quick, informed decisions, create cross selling and up selling opportunities, measure marketing effectiveness and deliver personalized Customer Care. Sounds great doesnt it.

The History of CRM Following on from Enterprise Resource Planning or ERP (the business strategy that promised to automate the back-office), the term CRM was first coined in the mid1990s. CRM in those days referred to the software used to help businesses manage their customer relationships. From sales force automation software (SFA) that focused on customer contact management to integrated knowledge management solutions, these were the early foundations of CRM. The last couple of years have seen the term broaden to encompass a more strategic approach and the investment of billions of dollars worldwide into CRM solutions and services has followed.

The Future CRM has already made a big impact in the world of Customer Service and will continue to do so. As more and more companies become customer-centric those that fail to do so will lose competitive advantage. As technology increases to develop at a startling rate the key emphasis will be how we can fully utilize it within our business. However let's not lose sight of the fact that Customer Relationship Management is about people first and technology second. Thats where the real value of CRM lies, harnessing the potential of people to create a greater customer experience, using the technology of CRM as the enabler. CRM may or may not prove to be the answer to providing excellent customer care, but the philosophy of putting customers at the heart of our business is definitely a step in the right direction. Just when it was in danger of becoming a forgotten Discipline, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) has Been back in the travel news over the last few months. It Was one of the central themes at last Novembers World? Travel Market. More recently, My Travel announced it is Investing in CRM technology to in, CEO UKLG, Richard Carricks words, . have the ability to have one-to-one Relationships the same as having 1.5 million corners Shops. CRM is about creating the feeling in your customers that You personally care, that they are not just numbers in your Computer system, that they can relax and trust that their Travel arrangements will go smoothly. This level of trust means that customers will be willing to Share information about them, information that can Be put to good use by the company to sell more goods and Services to the customer. Is this what CRM in Travel is About, or should a more sophisticated approach be adopted, Where CRM is used to genuinely improve customer service? Is CRM simply embodied by this privacy statement hidden away On one airlines Web site? We may also disclose the data That we hold about you to selected third parties. or is there A greater role for CRM than just being the latest buzzword For database marketing?

The issue for large travel companies and online businesses is How best to implement rigorous CRM technology that allows Them to adopt a small company culture, but is bad CRM Technology worse than having no CRM technology at all? Is it Prohibitively expensive to introduce good CRM? How have Other companies put CRM into practice?

For this conference, Travel Technology Initiative brings Together a group of speakers who can deliver the answers. Attend and find out for yourself about the solutions they are Deploying and the lessons they are learning.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) has received a lot of attention over the last few years and rightly so, in Travel & Tourism sector. In addition to managing customer relationships though, technology and other business relationships need equal attention. Our consulting services, implementing 360 degree CRM applications, are designed to cater to the Travel & Tourism industry in its improvisation initiatives. Thanks to Espire CRM implementation, many companies associated with the Travel & Tourism industry saw a significant improvement in the multi-level communication within the organization, which optimized the customer service process by many folds.through web, email, call center, kiosks and traveling information offices anytime & anywhere. What an experience! We are standing at "Taj Mahal" and we are able to read history details with all graphics and animated roles on multimedia kiosks. Even we can check our further travel.

Customer relationship management CRM based system enables service provider to provide knowledge, value and efficient service to its clients. CRM enables service provider to build up a life time relationship by providing on time solutions. Especially tourism industry needs excellent CRM solutions to assist visitors or clients before flying on tour, during tour and always after tour services. CRM solutions can be provided to a visitor Registration request process through kiosks. So much beyond our imagination.

Knowledge Management Systems

KM and business intelligence systems have wide scope of implementation in Tourism industry. Well, well, well we can imagine it. Comparing history timelines and providing instance knowledge about place on the spot makes eager to know more about place to a tourist. Even information enables analyst to find tourists behavior and trends with data and information. To find out customers demand is no more difficult task.

Supply Chain Management

Supply Chain Management Case Studies offers resources dedicated to Supply Chain Management thought leadership including business cases and management case studies that can help with supply chain planning, problem solving and decision making. Innovation and Supply Chain Innovative Supply Chain A successful supply chain requires an organization to be clear about its business objectives. A successful supply chain also requires innovation and adaptability. An innovative supply chain is largely driven through sharp business focus and synergy generated from an integrated functional approach. Some key factors that are essential to build an innovative supply chain are:
1. Culture and Leadership: Organizations must encourage employees to be creative

and innovative. IBM encourages an organizational culture with innovation emphasized in every employee's job description and evaluation. Top management support for an innovative supply chain creates a positive environment for change. An innovative organization should also foster a culture open to ideas. An innovative organization must recognize poor decisions and failures as part of a normal business process.

2. Reward Innovation: IBM's ISC team in Scotland has developed 200 innovation

projects in two years. IBM awards the best innovations.

3. Motivation to change: A successful implementation of innovation necessitates

organizations to constantly motivate for innovation. The approach may be out of sheer necessity or the will to excel constantly. With integrated functions, it is necessary for supply chain managers to become innovators.
4. Innovative employees: It is essential to have the right employees at the right place

for successful innovation. Innovative employees are creative, enterprising, desire change for the better constantly and can visualize differently. Employees may be initiated into innovation through training, benchmarking, professional development, job rotation or even recruitment of fresh talent.
5. Break traditional barriers to innovation: A supply chain is traditionally

considered as an operational function. Hence, innovation takes a backseat. However, operational workforce led by line managers should explore opportunities to innovate, improve existing processes and restructure operations with other functions. Innovation is not a new discipline in most organizations. However, the usual strategies in innovation and approaches adopted and succeeded in the '80s and '90s, are no longer sufficient. Organizations must involve in exciting experiments and innovation to reinvent the way they create the future, for "business as usual" does not always produce the desired results.
6. Evaluate the organizations present state of innovation: Supply chain managers

must benchmark the existing supply chain against the competition and keep track of business trends. It is also important to adopt constantly techniques that enable better performance from service providers so as to adapt the supply chain in accordance with the nature of product.
7. Prioritize Innovation: Companies acknowledge that innovation is the only

sustainable source for growth, competitive advantage, and new profits. However, only about 25 percent of the companies consider innovation as the key strategy to be successful in todays competitive environment. Organization must consider innovation in the supply chain as top priority and a responsibility of all employees, even the lower level employees. Organizations need to understand and evaluate the impact of innovation. This will allow organizations to put supply chain innovations on the same level as product innovations. In a dynamic environment, organizations are forced to adopt an innovative supply chain management strategy to ensure success and long term survival. For best results, innovation should be backed by the management and elicit the participation of all the employees. Innovation has always led organisations to stand out

Essential principles for managing innovation: Comprehensive approach to innovation. Innovation must include an organised, systematic, and continual search for new opportunities Involve everyone in the innovation process. Work constantly to improve the environment for innovation. Glaxo Smithkline Supply Chain Challenges Part II Glaxo Smithkline (GSK) spends about GBP 800 million to develop a drug. Its efforts and money will go waste unless its customers get the product in time without any defects and have no difficulty in handling the package. In other words, every facet of GSKs supply chain should be up to the mark. The previous article (Glaxo Smithkline Supply Chain Challenges Part I) highlighted some of the supply chain challenges GSK faces. This article illustrates GSKs response to those supply chain challenges.

Late pack customisation To counter the challenge of supplying to a multifaceted US market and low volume niche markets, GSK implemented the late pack customisation programme. While typical production runs were up to 30,000 numbers for cost effectiveness, GSK could effectively produce as low as 100 or 500 packs at a time with this programme. For instance, basic boxes were volume filled with blisters at the pack site and shifted to the two distribution centres in Europe. At these centres, clear labels were printed online with country related information and applied automatically. Even country specific folded leaflets were attached automatically. Quality was ensured with three two-dimensional bar codes, one pre-printed on the box, the other pre-printed on the leaflet and another printed online on the label. Online inspection on the codes could be performed at one go owing to their inline position.

Countering Packaging Complexities Global Pack Management With more than 36,000 SKUs and a six-month life cycle of its products, handling packaging specifications, associated graphics and artwork changes was an enormous task. Standardising the packaging changes was another major obstacle. GSK developed the Global Pack Management (GPM) to handle this complexity (currently in use for its prescription products). The GPM programme focussed on four major issues: 1. Change Standardisation- Packaging changes are standardised using global training and implementation programmes. 2. Developing a pack catalogue- All employees have access to a central and current set of all GSKs packaging information. This helps foster idea sharing while achieving packaging optimisation simultaneously. 3. Central artwork development: Accordingly, only four centres (strategically chosen at US, UK, Italy and India) were to service the packaging graphic needs of all products. Earlier, 250 centres performed the same activity. 4. Uniform and centralised information technology- This helps streamline workflow. Since all the employees use the same central applications (For example, GSK adopts the graphics industry standard Apple Macintosh computers and software) it ensures uniformity. There are no serious encryption issues, if packaging artwork is transferred between similar standard systems. Paperless labelling/electronic leaflets According to FDA regulations, all drug companies in the US must print and attach labels to every product going into the market. So, any label or leaflet change can take up to a year to reflect with pharmacy stores first emptying existing inventory. Working along with the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), GSK has been striving hard to push forward its paperless labelling initiative. The aim of paperless labels and electronic leaflets is to prescribe information to healthcare professionals electronically. This will help instant updation as any change in the leaflet/label is reflected automatically. Patient safety is the ultimate goal of GSK. Online Printing GSK is working on developing online printing that matches the speed of the packaging line and prints at the desired quality level. Efforts are on to keep costs of online printing down.

Countering Supplier/Outsourcing issues GSK realises the importance of finding and qualifying multiple suppliers to avoid any supply disruptions. For instance, for its popular Advair Diskus device, GSK has three suppliers, two in Europe and one in the US. The goal is to have enough capacity globally with all suppliers producing identical components with identical tooling on identical machines. Meeting strict regulations is of prime importance. Communication can play a vital role in establishing coordination among multiple suppliers. GSK uses an electronic CAD package. The CAD package has drawings indicating minor details and any subsequent or ongoing review to every component to overcome communication gaps if any. Countering Operational/production challenges GSK limits the number of equipment suppliers to minimise downtime. For instance, on one packaging line it has one supplier Schuberts four robotic systems. The robots do the cartooning and case packing as well. In response, Schubert offers GSK the benefit of assigning a dedicated team that works for GSK alone. The team also has an office in GSKs plant itself. Healthy supplier relationships have helped GSK minimise downtime. Moreover, all equipment from a single supplier facilitates a better understanding of the equipment functioning, than having disparate machines for same tasks. Thus training costs are also less. Furthermore, GSK uses a central TIPS production management system that minimises downtime. The system tracks downtime data allowing for ongoing production improvements. GSK is able to maintain product quality with vision cameras and online inspection using bar code scanners. GSK prefers to be the rapid follower instead of being bleeding edge with respect to technology adoption. Instead of using packaging only lines, GSK uses lines, which are integrated to do final assembly and packaging also. GSKs efforts as illustrated above have been successful. Organisations can follow its Supplu Chain Management strategies as they truly extend the value of product, packages, plants and people.

Principles of effective Supply Chain Management Customer Segmentation: The first principle of any successful supply chain is to fully understand customers and their needs. Customers must be segmented based on service needs rather than the industry. The services must then be tailored according to the respective segments. Logistics Network Customization: Tailor the logistics network and concentrate intently on the service needs and on the productivity of the identified customer segments. Planning: Understand the market demand and plan consequently. Planning must cover the entire supply chain to trace signals of varying demand. Product Differentiation: Differentiate product closer to the customer. Companies cannot hold inventory (safety or buffer stock) to account for poor demand forecasting Strategic Supply Management: By working closely with key component suppliers the supply sources can be managed strategically, thereby reducing the overall costs of owning materials and services. Supply chain wide IT strategy: To provide a clear view of the product, service and information flow an IT strategy that spans the entire supply chain and facilitates decision making at various levels must be formed. Performance Management metrics: Implement performance evaluation metrics that are relevant to every link in the supply chain and measure true profitability at every stage. By adopting a mixture of these best principles along with information technology, a company can gain integrated forecasting, planning, and execution capabilities with complete supply chain visibility. With such supply chain capabilities, a company can combine its orders and study the material requirements instantly. Supply Chain Management Supply Chain Management spans all activities related with movement of goods from the raw material stage through to the end user. Successful supply chain management integrates all these activities:

Sourcing and procurement Production Scheduling Order processing Inventory Management Transportation and Logistics into a flawless process.

Supply Chain Management links all the partners in the chain, focuses on actual customer demand, and minimises the flow of raw materials, finished product and packaging materials at every point. Tools like JIT (just in time), QR (quick response), VMI (vendor managed inventory) among others are used to streamline a supply chain. Quality Assurance Quality Assurance covers all activities from design, development, production, installation, servicing and documentation. This introduced the rules: "fit for purpose" and "do it right the first time". It includes the regulation of the quality of raw materials, assemblies, products and components; services related to production; and management, production, and inspection processes. One of the most widely used paradigms for QA management is the PDCA (Plan-DoCheck-Act) approach, also known as the Shewhart cycle Total quality control Total Quality Control is the most necessary inspection control of all in cases where, despite statistical quality control techniques or quality improvements implemented, sales decrease. The major problem which leads to a decrease in sales was that the specifications did not include the most important factor, What the customer required. Overview: Poor quality management can lead to rework, customer dissatisfaction, higher costs, and missed deadlines. This template will help you avoid those problems by defining expectations and forging a solid plan to satisfy or exceed them. Many projects fall short of client expectations because the project manager didn't think ahead about how he or she was going to manage quality on the project. That's where the quality plan comes into play. It identifies the client's expectations for quality and spells out the project manager's plan to meet those expectations. We've updated this quality plan template to give project managers a solid jumping-off point for developing their own quality management approach. It includes sections for outlining