Customer Relationship Management Flow

Enterasys Networks Receives 2011 CRM Excellence Award from Customer ...

"We have been using Enterasys products in our data center for many years," said ' support team."

Through Salesforce CRM and Service Cloud 2 applications, including the streamlining of critical global sales and customer data in multiple languages and currencies,  Enterasys Networks' Global Technical Assistance Center (GTAC) provides customers and partners with direct, high-touch access to GTAC personnel. As opposed to a one-hour call back, or call-coordinator strategy used by many other vendors in the networking marketplace, Enterasys combines the use of leading software technology with long-tenured support staff and an in-sourced support model. Through its Automated Call Distribution (ACD) system, the customer or partner is connected directly to GTAC Engineers and Technical Teams who are responsible for supporting specific product lines 24x7x365.

Recently, Enterasys further integrated with Salesforce Chatter with the introduction of isaac , the industry's first social media interface to IT management systems.  With isaac, customer network support issues are resolved with real-time feedback from any IP device via messages from Chatter, as well as other popular social media channels, such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. This ensures much faster resolution times for any network issues.

"Making the customer our top priority is central to our culture at Enterasys. We are proud that this core value has shined in the industry and led us to be recognized as a leader in customer relationship management," said , Chief Customer Officer for Enterasys Networks. "Our customers view us as a strategic partner, and to maintain this close relationship, we utilize CRM technologies in innovative ways, including the recent breakthrough of isaac. This has helped us extend our industry-leading customer support and achieve an overall customer satisfaction rate of 97 percent and a first-person resolution rate of 94 percent, exceeding industry averages and offering exceptional service. We are also able to leverage the global presence of Siemens Enterprise Communications' managed services unit, which has been ranked as best in industry, to provide excellent service to customers no matter where they are located.

Supply Chain Business Process Integration

Supply chain business process integration involves collaborative work between buyers and suppliers, joint product development, common systems and shared information. According to Lambert and Cooper (2000) operating an integrated supply chain requires continuous information flows, which in turn assist to achieve the best product flows. However, in many companies, management has reached the conclusion that optimizing the product flows cannot be accomplished without implementing a process approach to the business. The key supply chain processes stated by Lambert (2004) are: Customer Relationship Management concerns the relationship between the organization and its customers.Customer service provides the source of customer information. It also provides the customer with real-time information on promising dates and product availability through interfaces with the company’s production and distribution operations. Successful organizations use following steps to build customer relationships: Strategic plans are developed with suppliers to support the manufacturing flow management process and development of new products. In firms where operations extend globally, sourcing should be managed on a global basis. The desired outcome is a win-win relationship, where both parties benefit, and reduction times in the design cycle and product development is achieved. Also, the purchasing function develops rapid communication systems, such as electronic data interchange (EDI) and Internet linkages to transfer possible requirements more rapidly. Activities related to obtaining products and materials from outside suppliers. This requires performing resource planning, supply sourcing, negotiation, order placement, inbound transportation, storage and handling and quality assurance. Also, includes the responsibility to coordinate with suppliers in scheduling, supply continuity, hedging, and research to new sources or programmes. Here, customers and suppliers must be united into the product development process, thus to reduce time to market. As product life cycles shorten, the appropriate products must be developed and successfully launched in ever shorter time-schedules to remain competitive. According to Lambert and Cooper (2000), managers of the product development and commercialization process must: The manufacturing process is produced and supplies products to the distribution channels based on past forecasts. Manufacturing processes must be flexible to respond to market changes, and must accommodate mass customization. Orders are processes operating on a just-in-time (JIT) basis in minimum lot sizes. Also, changes in the manufacturing flow process lead to shorter cycle times, meaning improved responsiveness and efficiency of demand to customers. Activities related to planning, scheduling and supporting manufacturing operations, such as work-in-process storage, handling, transportation, and time phasing of components, inventory at manufacturing sites and maximum flexibility in the coordination of geographic and final assemblies postponement of physical distribution operations. This concerns movement of a finished product/service to customers. In physical distribution, the customer is the final destination of a marketing channel, and the availability of the product/service is a vital part of each channel participant’s marketing effort. It is also through the physical distribution process that the time and space of customer service become an integral part of marketing, thus it links a marketing channel with its customers (e.g. links manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers). This is not just outsourcing the procurement of materials and components, but also outsourcing of services that traditionally have been provided in-house. The logic of this trend is that the company will increasingly focus on those activities in the value chain where it has a distinctive advantage and everything else it will outsource. This movement has been particularly evident in logistics where the provision of transport, warehousing and inventory control is increasingly subcontracted to specialists or logistics partners. Also, to manage and control this network of partners and suppliers requires a blend of both central and local involvement. Hence, strategic decisions need to be taken centrally with the monitoring and control of supplier performance and day-to-day liaison with logistics partners being best managed at a local level. Experts found a strong relationship from the largest arcs of supplier and customer integration to market share and profitability. By taking advantage of supplier capabilities and emphasizing a long-term supply chain perspective in customer relationships can be both correlated with firm performance. As logistics competency becomes a more critical factor in creating and maintaining competitive advantage, logistics measurement becomes increasingly important because the difference between profitable and unprofitable operations becomes more narrow. A.T. Kearney Consultants (1985) noted that firms engaging in comprehensive performance measurement realized improvements in overall productivity. According to experts internal measures are generally collected and analyzed by the firm including The SCM management components are the third element of the four-square circulation framework. The level of integration and management of a business process link is a function of the number and level, ranging from low to high, of components added to the link (Ellram and Cooper, 1990; Houlihan, 1985). Consequently, adding more management components or increasing the level of each component can increase the level of integration of the business process link. The literature on business process reengineering,[4] buyer-supplier relationships,[5] and SCM[6] suggests various possible components that must receive managerial attention when managing supply relationships.

Supply chain for liquids, out of the box approaches to liquid logistics

CRM (customer relationship management) for the common man, the essential guide to designing and planning a successful CRM strategy for your business

Electronic customer relationship management

Supply chain management, processes, partnerships, performance

Principles of customer relationship management