Organisation and management

• The main functions of an organisation are to plan, organise, lead/manage, control and coordinate.
• Functional strategies and value chain management are crucial for achieving superior quality, efficiency, innovation, and responsiveness to customers.
• Understanding what customers want and being responsive to their needs is important for managers.
• Achieving superior quality is important and understanding the challenges facing managers and organizations that seek to implement total quality management is crucial.
• Achieving superior efficiency is important and understanding the different kinds of techniques that need to be employed to increase efficiency is crucial.
• Innovation and product development are crucial components of the search for competitive advantage.
• There are four ways to achieve a competitive advantage: cost leadership, differentiation, focus, and innovation.
• Functional strategies can be classified as cost-based, differentiation-based, or focus-based.
• Support activities are a part of the value chain and include infrastructure, human resources, technology, and knowledge management.
• Primary activities of the value chain include inbound logistics, operations, outbound logistics, and sales and marketing.
• Functional strategies are important for managing the value chain and increasing responsiveness to customers.
• Customer responsiveness is crucial for organizational success and the value chain must be agile to accommodate changes in customer preferences.
• Facilities layout is the way in which machines, robots, and people are grouped together, affecting how productive they can be.
• A defect is anything that does not meet customer requirements.
• There are several important strategies that managers can use to improve efficiency: Facilities layout, flexible manufacturing, process improvement, and just-in-time inventory.
• Efficiency is important because increased efficiency lowers production costs, which lets an organization make a greater profit or attract more customers by lowering its prices.
• Product layout is the most efficient layout for making large quantities of a single product.
• There are three basic ways of arranging workstations: Product layout, Process layout, and Fixed-position layout.
• Fixed-position layout is most efficient for making large, complex products that are difficult to move.
• Process improvement is the use of methods such as Six Sigma to identify and eliminate waste in a process.
• By eliminating waste, managers can improve efficiency and lower costs.
• By eliminating defects, managers can improve quality and reduce costs.
• Six Sigma is a set of quality management techniques that focus on improving the quality of products and processes.
• Case studies of companies that have implemented functional strategies include Nokia and Southwest Airlines.
• Process layout is most efficient for making small batches of a variety of products.
• Six Sigma aims to eliminate defects from a process.
• Waste is any activity that does not add value to the product or service.
• Total Quality Management (TQM) requires the cooperation of managers in every function of an organization and across functions.
• Improved sales and customer satisfaction is a benefit of CRM systems as they help companies identify and target potential customers, increase customer retention rates, and improve customer satisfaction.
• After-sales service and support in a CRM system tracks customer service interactions, identifies top customer complaints, and provides recommendations for improving customer service.
• Customers are vital to organizational success.
• Higher product quality can increase efficiency and thereby lower operating costs and boost profits, as per TQM.
• Customer Relationship Manager (CRM) helps companies understand customer needs.
• Reduced costs is a benefit of CRM systems as they can help companies reduce costs by improving customer service, reducing customer churn, and automating tasks.
• Customers usually prefer a higher-quality product to a lower-quality product, which is why TQM emphasizes product quality.
• Improves customer satisfaction and loyalty.
• Increased revenue is a benefit of CRM systems as they help companies increase sales by identifying and targeting potential customers, upselling and cross-selling to existing customers, and providing personalized customer service.
• Sales and selling in a CRM system tracks sales data, analyzes customer buying behavior, and provides recommendations for improving sales performance.
• Marketing in a CRM system tracks customer preferences, analyzes marketing campaigns, and provides recommendations for improving marketing effectiveness.
• Total Quality Management (TQM) is a functional strategy that focuses on improving the quality of an organization's products and stressing that all of an organization's value chain activities should be directed toward this goal.