CHAPTER 4: INTERACTIVE SESSION : ORGANIZATION

Burton Snowboards Speed Ahead with Nimble Business Process

11.    Analyse Burton using the value chain and competitive forces models.

                                

Traditional customers

-          At its peak, burton controlled over 40% of the U.S snowboarding market and its            remains the market leader despite growing competition.

-          One way Burtons has stayed market leaders is being adaptable anddynamic which is        competitive necessity.

-          Burton take feedback from its customers very seriously and will move quickly to meet    their needs. An example, of this is if a rider test a jacket and recommends repositioning  a zipper. Burtons production line mustr be able to make this adjustment quickly and  easily.

·         New market entrants

-          Burtons design manufactures and markets snowboarding equipment, one way they have  taken steps to ensure that they don’t lose customers to new market entrants is by  strengthening customers and supplier intimacy.

-          The available to promise process was taking hours to complete. (Available to promise,    in response to customer order to enquires, reports on available quantities of a requested product and delivery due dates). Burtons wanted to speed up this process so that its dealers and retail customers would have more precise information about the availability of items not in stock. Strengthening customers and supplier intimacy in this way from strong ties with them, which reduces the likely hood of new market entrants taking customers from them.

·         Substitute products and services

-          Burtons decided that it would explore basic functionalities of SAP enterprise resources planning (ERP) software and adding new layers of complexity to its IT infrastructure and maintenance costs of their equipment. This is because Burtons want attracts more customers and strengthen the loyalth of customer.

·         Customers

-          Burtons always takes feedback from its customers and always measures the customers needs. For example, Burton found that the process of reporting inventory was inefficient and both suppliers and customers could not easily determine up-to-date information on which items were in stock at which warehouse. SAP AND Burton worked together to improve communication between warehouse and supply chain efficiency.

·         Suppliers

-          Burton has different suppliers to provide different equipment. For example, Burton has implemented and currently maintains SAP enterprise software an oracle database, a SUSE LINUX enterprise server and commodity hardware.