The Intimate Supply Chain: Leveraging the Supply Chain to Manage the Customer Experience »

The growing power being exercised by today’s consumer is causing significant paradigm shifts away from traditional marketing. This is leading to a whole new take on the structure and functioning of supply chain management (SCM). It’s no longer so much about improving the manufacturing process as it is improving the point and speed of contact and the continued interaction that you have with your customer.

The Intimate Supply Chain: Leveraging the Supply Chain to Manage the Customer Experience explores how SCM can assist companies to grow and prosper in the new global economy. It focuses on what the customer wants from the supply chain and how organizations must restructure their outdated business models to meet their customer’s needs. Covering this dramatic shift in customer management, David Ross, bestselling author and recognized industry expert, demonstrates how to design and maintain an efficient and up-to-date delivery channel, showcasing the methods and technologies needed to adapt to the evolving, demand-driven market.

Exceptionally practical in his approach, Ross provides a new perspective that requires a broader mindset about the structure and functioning of SCM. He explains how effective management must start with the aim of getting personal with customers in order to bring total value to their shopping experience. Rather than concentrate on a range of products, this work defines a roadmap that will lead to increased empathy for your customers so that you will be able to provide them with unbeatable and readily recognizable value. When properly traveled, you will discover that it is a roadmap to increased profitability and market share.

1 The Revolution in Customer Management: Becoming Intimate with Today's Customer 1

2 Learning to Grow and Prosper in a Global Economy: Realities of Supply Chain Management in the Twenty-First Century 25

3 The Enabling Power of Supply Chains: Leveraging the Process Value Chain to Support Customer Intimacy 53

4 Designing and Maintaining a Delivery Channel: Creating Value Delivery Networks to Drive Customer Intimacy 75

5 The Evolving Supply Chain: From Logistics to the Lean Supply Chain 97

6 The Adaptive, Demand-Driven Supply Chain: Using the Supply Chain to Manage Risk 129

7 The Intimate Supply Chain: Using the Supply Chain to Manage the Customer Experience 165

8 Structuring the Intimate Supply Chain: Differentiating Your Supply Chain by Engaging Today's Customer 197

9 Methods and Technologies: Applying Methods and Technologies to Build Intimate Supply Chains 229

Afterword 257

Index 263