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Supply Chain Management - Overview

Visionary companies are building extended enterprises to best compete in the new Internet economy. An extended enterprise combines the Internet's power with new business structures and processes to eliminate old corporate boundaries and geographic restrictions. Networked supply chains create seamless paths of communication among partners, suppliers, manufacturers, retailers, and customers. Are you using customer service and distribution as a strategic weapon?

Supply Chain Solution - A Catalyst for Competitive Advantage
More and more, businesses must run at the speed of the Internet to satisfy escalating customer demands. To compete in this quickly changing, customer-driven era, companies must move beyond functional Website and e-mail. A supply chain is one way companies are revolutionizing their services.

New Opportunities in Supply Chain
By seamlessly integrating supply chain suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, and retailers into a single virtual enterprise serving the customer, companies are achieving huge competitive advantages. Companies such as Federal Express, Proctor & Gamble, and Wal-Mart have used the networked supply chain to dramatically transform the competitive landscape of their markets.

Cisco Systems, a leading example of how a company can leverage the power of a supply chain, saves $175 million annually. Cisco's supply chain starts with the customer---more than 80 percent of Cisco product orders are now placed via the Internet---translating to $36.7 million in business per day (up from $10 million just two years ago). Supply partners fulfill more than half of these orders. And customer satisfaction ratings have soared since the company implemented this online ordering process.

A supply chain allows e-commerce to best fulfill its promise to customers: the promise of consistent, timely delivery; quality products; and lower costs. With a supply chain, customers place orders on a Web-based front end, (which could include configuration,) and they are promised delivery dates based on supply chain availability. Order fulfillment is then driven by the ability to immediately communicate orders to supply chain constituents who manufacture, test, and deliver products at unprecedented costs and speeds.

Cisco knows how to deliver a robust supply chain. It has overcome many obstacles and challenges---both technical and organizational---to create a powerful competitive advantage that it now offers to its customers.

Benefits of a Supply Chain
In a networked supply chain, each supplier and partner can securely access key business information and is empowered to make informed decisions to best serve customers. The benefits of a supply chain include:

Faster inventory turns throughout the supply chain, reducing both inventory carrying costs and overall product cost base
Enhanced customer satisfaction through online order entry and configuration
Flexibility to design, ramp up, and retire products rapidly in response to customer and market demand
Shorter engineering-to-production cycle time to increase market share
Ability to sustain product quality while outsourcing major portions of the fulfillment process

The first step in embracing an e-business initiative is a commitment to transformation. You need to determine the executive sponsorship, and select your consulting or software partner who can facilitate the assessment. The partners you select can assist with a complete business and technical assessment, using proven methodologies and accelerated processes. As part of our commitment to the development of an ecosystem of complementary products and services, Cisco has qualified a limited number of consulting firms and independent software vendors that can make supply chain a reality in your own organization.

Once you know where to begin, project plans can be built and phased appropriately. Cisco's methodology emphasizes an iterative approach and avoids mega-projects with 9 month or longer implementation cycles. Because there is no client software to deploy with Web-enabled applications you can start your project and incrementally add functionality. Your early projects should fit in the category of "low-hanging fruit" and have specific boundaries where you can achieve clear benefits within a projected time frame enabling a rapid deployment cycle. Most importantly, plan for the future: build a standards based, robust foundation infrastructure that can easily scale as you deploy additional applications.

The solution framework is based on Cisco's Leading Practices. Comprehensive information on the strategies and key success factors involved in deploying e-business applications includes a case study on Cisco's successful supply chain strategy, industry trends, e-business models, application/opportunity portfolio analysis tools, business cases, and Return on Investment (ROI) models.

A comprehensive overview of Cisco's Supply Chain Solution, including the measurable benefits realized, the categories and components that comprise a supply chain offering, the New World network infrastructure to support Internet-powered applications, and referral process to the leading consulting partners and software vendors.

Networking the Supply Chain for Competitive Advantage [0.16M]
An overview of the Cisco Supply Chain Management Solution

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