Question

Radical changes in a company’s markets and technological needs often make obsolete the competencies of the existing management. Change management is occasionally necessary in every organization. When this power shift becomes necessary, it should be done quickly rather than endure further destabilising delays. However, change management should be handled with caution because of resistance to change. Management expert Charles Darwin has stated that:

“It is not the strongest of the species that survive nor the most intelligent, but the one most
responsive to change”.

From the above statement examine how adapting to change in business strategy and the business environment may impact customers from supply chain perspective.                                                       

                                                                                                                                                                    

Answer 1

Q: From the above statement examine how adapting to change in business strategy and the business environment may impact customers from supply chain perspective.

A: It was deduced from a Deloitte survey conducted in 2014 that about 80% of the companies that have a high performance supply chain achieve growth far higher than their industry average while only about 10% of companies with a lower performance supply chain achieve above average growth comparatively. Further, about 50% of those companies that have a poor performing supply chain result in failure and shut down within the first five years of their launch irrespective of their size. This clearly shows the importance of the supply chain which amounts to about 90% of the total business costs and yet companies fail to give due weightage towards design processes of their supply chains during change management strategies being implemented and just expect it to evolve on its own which results in failure in the long run especially since customer satisfaction is very dependent on a supply chain.

Some of the common factors that can impact customers from a supply chain perspective when adapting to change in a business strategy and business environment are inventory shortages which can lead to disruption in the supply of a product and dissatisfaction to a customer, long delivery time leads which causes frustration to customers who don't want to wait for a longer duration to receive their order, delays in responses and delays in relaying feedback on customer requests can result in poor service due to delays in servicing those requests, poor product or service quality due to a faulty supply chain feedback mechanism the voice of the customer gets drowned out and lost leading to customer dissatisfaction, time lags in the market for new products in such a scenario a product is launched and promoted and initial excitement is created with the consumers but there is a long delay in availability in the market leading to consumer disappointment and product failure.