Question

it is a scenario-based question from operations management. ABC collects the plants from the BC forests and sells them in the market. the four types of its customer segments are the vegetarians, restaurants, special diet plans (dietician) and the sellers. In order to have the smooth running of business we need to answer:

how it sells its products to its customers along with the mediums

Two competitive strategies from the operations so that its operations are running smoothly viz. stocking and tactical strategies. we need to ex[plain them in the above scenario in detail.

Answer 1

Answer:

Scenario - ABC buys the plants from their vendor BC forests and sells in the market to their four customer segments as vegetarians, restaurants, special diet plans and sellers. For their smooth run of business operation, ABC sells its plant products to its customers along with the agreed mediums so that it can achieve their customer expectations. The key factors that ABC wants to ensure in this sell process as below

· On time delivery: ABC wants to ensure that the process of selling the plant products result in on time delivery to all of their customer segments so that all the customers will get their products on time and they can manage their requirements. This results in customer satisfaction.

· Competitive pricing: ABC wants to keep the competitive pricing for the plant products so that their customer feels that they are getting the plants at competitive pricing and they do not explore alternate supplier for their needs.

· Good quality plants: ABC wants to ensure that the quality levels of the plant products are defined and meeting their customer segment requirements. Thus this helps in meeting the customer expectations on product quality point of view.

· BC Forest Management: ABC wants to manage BC forest adequately with proper measures so that he can get the adequate response from BC forest for meeting their customer requirements.

· Close watch on market competition: ABC wants to run analysis on market competition so that he can understand the market dynamics and initiate the necessary changes as needed for smooth run of the business.

Two competitive strategies from the ABC operations, so that ABC’s operations are running smoothly viz. stocking and tactical strategies as below

· Inventory Strategy: ABC wants to have proper inventory management strategy well supported with forecasting process so that they do not have high cost for inventory and they can manage high inventory turns. Inventory strategy will help them in meeting customer requirements as well as keeping low cost for the business.

· Tactical Strategy (Discount Scheme): ABC wants to explore the tactical strategies like discount schemes so that they can push the sales in the particular time frame and achieve the sale targets.