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Supply chains and information flows are two sides of the same
coin. In fact, today, when international security is being
tightened, sending information about goods before they actually
leave for the destination is considered a best practice.
Customer relationship management (CRM) has been the
buzzword making the rounds these days. In the ‘02 ETIG-IBM
Business Consulting Survey, 11% of the respondents had said that
they had already implanted CRM programmes. In ‘04, 33% respondents
have already done so. And over 97% of them said
that these programmes have been effective in segmenting,
targetting and servicing customers better. Within industries, 13%
of the FMCG companies surveyed had already implemented CRM
programmes.
But every company surveyed declared that CRM had only been
‘somewhat effective’, possibly because of the nature of the
business. Consumers are in the millions and information can come
from a vast array of sources. In contrast, each and every steel
company which had implemented CRM rated it as the programme of its
choice. Paint, electrical, electronics and
pharma companies surveyed are also very satisfied with CRM.
Significantly, they have large chunks of industrial or trade
customers who are handled by customer account managers, who play a
key role in the success of any CRM programme.
ERP is touted as the lifeline of the company, the integrator and
the one that sees all. 52% of the respondents had already
implemented ERP, and three-fourths of these had found ERP to be
extremely effective in business. In practically every industry,
more companies have already implanted some ERP: auto (64%);
ancillaries (50%); durables (75%); and paints (67%). More than
half of the companies which have implemented ERP are happy with
its results. That should be good news for the
Rs 1,200-crore ERP industry which is growing at over 15% a
year. A renewed focus on manufacturing is visible in the fact that
46% of the companies surveyed had a Manufacturing Resource
Planning (MRP) programme installed, and 75% of them are finding it
to be a great help.
Today’s businesses generate a vast amount of data for every
conceivable product, service, customer and other aspects in an
effort to understand the markets better. Not surprisingly,
converting that data into valuable information is big business and
an investment for companies. 44% of the companies surveyed had
already implemented data warehousing (up from 32% in 2002) and
mining applications, and another 26% have plans to do so. Almost
every company – over 97% of the users – found this practice to
yield good results in revealing consumer trends, patterns and
potential segments. A large numbers of paints,
steel, pharma and cement companies have already some manner of
data warehousing and mining but satisfaction levels vary, mainly
due to how the data is interpreted and used.
One of the options which has opened up because of the focus on
costs and IT-enabled services is electronic procurement, with all
its promises to cut time and costs (including transaction costs),
transparency and speed. In ‘02, 26% of the respondents had said
they already had electronic procurement; in ‘04, this figure is
30%. Another 38% are planning to go in
for electronic procurement. 63% of the implementers have found
electronic procurement to be extremely effective.
- Compiled by SANCHIT |
