Rikus discussed the concepts of Supply Chain Management and Just in Time last week. To elaborate on this, I am going to discuss two concepts of a more advanced nature relating to supply chain management today, namely Inventory Optimisation and Supply Chain Visibility. I will kick-off with Supply Chain visibility, as this is a fundamental concept applicable to everyone.

This week we will continue this series by investigating some of the more popular philosophies within SCM and their relevance to the Namibian business environment. The first one I will look at is Just-in-Time (JIT), a term which many have seen in text books and articles, but few have seen in reality!

This week we will start with a series on Supply Chain Management (SCM) and the involvement of an ERP/Business Management System on this business function. We will look at the definition of SCM first.

As discussed last week, sales force automation basically includes all of the technologies, techniques, and strategies on which successful sales are built. We will continue with this topic this week by looking at the concepts of contact management and pipeline management in the sales function and the involvement of ERP / Business Management Systems.