Value Chain Collaboration - Collaborative Solutions
Imagine your enterprise in an open community. Your customers are loyal—hooked up to you because you provide rich, personalized information. Think of the possibilities. The Internet is enabling new ways to do business. It is redefining the corporate model and the customer experience—creating exciting opportunities in marketing and sales, procurement and dynamic collaboration.
Collaborative Business Processes
The extended enterprise denotes a company that collaborates with its suppliers, partners, and customers to streamline business processes, transcending traditional boundaries and enhancing mutual customer benefits. Thus, an extended enterprise involves several collaborative business processes, of which you can find a few examples below. These processes are further described in the "Step-by-Step Guide to the Extended Enterprise".
Customer Relationship Management
Customer relationship management (CRM) is a business strategy to select and manage customers to optimize long-term value and increase customer share. It extends the concept of selling from an individual act performed by a sales person to a continuous process involving every step from marketing to after sales.
Vendor Managed Inventory
Vendor managed inventory is a process where the supplier is responsible for a customer’s inventory in terms of certifying agreed inventory levels, service levels and quality.
Collaborative Planning
Collaborative planning is an interactive process where customers and suppliers in a value chain continuously cooperate and share information on demand planning and forecasts.
E-Procurement
E-procurement is the process in which purchasing-related activities are carried out with the help of the Internet or any other type of electronic communication.
Sub-Contracting
Sub-contracting is a process in which an external contractor performs one or more defined operations in a customer’s manufacturing process.
Collaborative Project Management
Collaborative project management entails working together over organizational boundaries and sharing information through the Internet in all types of project-like work, making it possible to get right to market as well as reduce project and product costs.