The Five Keys to Succeeding in Your Marketplace

In such a high-paced business environment, your marketplace is often dynamic and unforgiving. Competition is prevalent – with certain rivals duplicating successful products and offering them at lower costs than you. In addition, globalization has created a need for new channels to continue to expand to new markets. In doing so, supply chains become longer and way more complex. And as customers’ demand continues to rise, you need to come up with new ways to create flexible product configuration and more accurate order fulfillment. How do you manage this?

To stay competitive and meet rising expectations, you must seize every opportunity to grow. The five strategies that promote competitive advantage are:

1. Position your organization for profitable growth – How do you deal with fluctuations in supply and demand? When raw material prices rise, you often need to find new supply routes. To chart a path of successful growth, you need the financial and operational commitment to do so. To grow wisely and profitably regardless of the economic climate, you need an integrated business management solution that provides clear visibility into all activities across your organization. This ranges from product development and purchasing to production and sales. An integrated solution with built-in analytics can identify areas of opportunity and position your organization for future growth.
2. Strive for excellence – Do you have a lean business philosophy? Meaning do you focus on eliminating waste and continuously improving your business processes? Regardless of what type of production environment you operate in, it’s crucial for you to have an integrated system that can optimize your daily operations and help systematically reduce waste, simplify processes, and improve overall flexibility. An enterprise resource planning (ERP) system provides integrated, streamlined, and automated processes, making it possible to simultaneously increase efficiency and cut costs.
3. Enhance visibility to improve decision making – In today’s competitive, global marketplace, how do you make decisions that align with your corporate objectives? Do various departments in your organization use different data systems? If so, this could prevent information sharing and delay timely decisions. By integrating organizational and geographically distributed activities and data, you can consistently execute decisions that support corporate strategy across all geographies. A single analytical platform across your business allows you to develop a realistic business plan that ties strategy with performance, enhancing your visibility into making informed decisions.
4. Capture first-to-market advantage – The availability of mobile technologies in today’s marketplace offer immediate access to product information, making the latest products more available with better choices and higher quality. To stay ahead of competition, you need to develop a methodology for predictable, repeatable, and cost-efficient product development.  By using a single system, you can analyze customer requirements, market projects, and competitive intelligence to promote a first-to-market advantage.
5. Streamline the supply chain – Globalization has increased the complexity and risk of traditional supply chains. The complicated nature of global supply routes drives the need for the final key to success: a streamlined supply chain. Purchasing quality materials and services can efficiently and cost-effectively be a good start to a streamlined supply chain. You need full visibility across even the most complex supply network, plus the ability to automate tasks and streamline daily processes. In addition, access to centralized information gives you a clear view of procurement, leading to better decisions about internal and outsourced activities.

SAP Business One and Third Wave Business Systems can address these five strategies, enabling you to better manage and consolidate your processes, giving you insight into where and how you make a profit. Contact Third Wave today to find out more!