Supply Chain Management in Services Industry

Book excerpt: In today's competitive environment, services industries are facing the challenge of improving operational efficiencies and reducing cost, without negatively impacting customer service. Further challenges arise due to technology revolution, increasing customer expectations, frequently changing customer needs and a dynamic market scenario. In the highly competitive environment of today, new product development, marketing and promotion costs are increasing constantly. Services providers are recognised, because only in that area it is possible to reduce costs in the supply chain. To meet these challenges, services providers are beginning to implement Supply Chain Management practices (SCM), that create a balance between customer requirements and supply chain capabilities. SCM can bring reliability, responsiveness, consistency, flexibility, cost reduction and process efficiency. Traditionally, organisations were implementing SCM with the purpose of achieving operational efficiency and cost cutting. In today's competitive environment with increasing customer demands, organisations are looking for leveraging competitive advantage to deliver better customer service. When the internet and RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technologies emerged, they brought a new dimension to SCM concept. Even though many software providers such as SAP, Oracle and IBM offer SCM concepts to the organisation, no one has a complete software package. This book explains how service chains differ from the traditional supply chain, and elaborates on the challenges in implementing SCM in the service industry. The book also focuses on the benefits of using the supply chain in service industries like financial, healthcare, postal and courier, retail, entertainment and tourism services.