Analyze Burton using the value chain and competitive forces models.
- Value chain: Burton company itself is the value chain because they design, manufactures and market their item independently related to snowboarding clothe and accessories.
- Competitive forces model: Strategic position in the firm and strategies are determined by competition with traditional direct competitors. Their market also greatly affected by new market entrants, substitute products and service, suppliers, and customers.
- The value chain use by Burton is implemented and currently maintains SAP enterprise software, an Oracle database, a SUSE Linux enterprise server, and commodity hardware. Before making this upgrades, Burton’s information systems were a hodgepodge of inconsistently had to implemented and underutilized software. The company had to manually allocate product to customers and orders.
- Burton explores basic functionalities of SAP enterprise resource planning (ERP) software and resolve IT problems without adding new layers of complexity to its IT infrastructure, and the company gained proficiency with SAP enterprise software in the process. Burton aims for standard, traditional versions of software whenever possible, realizing that with more bells and whistles comes increased maintenance costs and steeper leaning curves to understanding the software.
- The competitive forces models used by Burton is substitute service, supplies and customers. Before that, Burton had to manually allocate product to customers and orders. Now, Burton substitutes it by using SAP that can improve communication between warehouses and supply chain efficiency. Both suppliers and customers could easily determine the up-to-date information which items were in stock at which warehouse.
Why are the business processes described in this case such an important source of competitive advantage for Burton?
- Burton company is the first company to manufacture snowboard, but increasingly day many have been involved in this undertaking. This caused the Burton’s company has faced a tough marketing process to retain their snowboards in the market they have to figure out something that can satisfy their customers. They have to study the market and also the needs of customers today.
- SAP analysts helped Burton identify the top five transactions that were the most critical to its business operations and that needed optimization from a systems standpoint. Burton could identify unnecessarily complicated processes, backlogs, and design gaps in the flow of its business processes. Moreover, a management dashboard developed with the help of SAP shows how smoothly a critical process is running at certain point in time. Information from the dashboard helps Burton’s key users discover inconsistencies, gaps, or other areas that they should be monitoring more closely.
Explain exactly how these process improvements enhance Burton’s operational performance and decision making
- Process improvement enhance is they have reduced the time in production of new product, in order to avoid excessive costs. They also reduce losses by imposing conditions such as customers need to pay before taking any product. They also upgrade their warehouse system operations in choosing to use a system that more closely and easier to control the in and out of a product.
- These process improvements enhance Burton’s operational performance and decision making during what Burton calls its “reorder” season. Burton’s dealers place orders to stock their stores well before winter sets in. As consumers start buying the merchandise, the dealers reorder with Burton to replenish their stock or to buy new products. Thus, they are able to see more timely product availability data, and receive orders more rapidly now.
