see attached, two assignments
Read the case study “The Coronavirus Pandemic Disrupts Supply Chains Around The World”
(see attached). As you review the case focus on two issues in particular:
1. Supply chain visibility
2. Safety stock
Assume that you are advising (consulting) for a mid-sized regional auto parts supplier. Using
information from the case study and external resources make well-supported recommendations
for this company in terms of investments in supply chain visibility and safety stock. For the
purpose of this assignment, you can assume that this publicly-traded company has $50 million in
annual sales, $3 million in current safety stock, and $5 million in annual profit. Be sure to
balance the need to provide value to the stockholders with your recommendations for
investments. Explain specifically what the focal areas should be for your recommended
investments. In other words, don’t just say “invest $1 million in visibility”, but should that be
invested in a supply chain managment system (or something else) and what should be the
primary goals of that system. Your recommended plan can be tactical (for a single year) or it can
be more strategic for up to 5 years.
Be sure to clearly articulate your recommendations (for each issue) and explain the benefits of
your plan.
Cite at least 2 external references for each issue and provide a bibliography.
2-3 pages, times new roman, 12pt font
Read the Interactive Session “CRM Helps Adidas Know Its Customers One Shoe Buyer at a
Time” (see attached). Be sure to support your positions with at least 1 external reference per
question (minimum of 3 total) and provide a bibliography.
1. Is the Salesforce.com CRM system used by Adidas more of an Operational CRM or an
Analytical CRM? Support your position and defend it against the opposing position.
2. What data does Adidas need to determine Customer lifetime value (CLTV) for their products?
Could this change over the customer’s lifetime and what additional information might Adidas
want to capture in anticipation of future changes? (suggest at least 2 additional pieces of data that
aren’t mentioned in the case study)
3. Study Figure 9.9 CUSTOMER LOYALTY MANAGEMENT PROCESS MAP in the
textbook (see below). Is it a. fair and b. ethical for companies to treat customer’s requests for
service differently as suggested in this model? What rights should customers have with regard to
the data used in this process and evaluation? Be sure to answer both the fair and ethical
components of this question and support both arguments. You are only required to have 1
external source and it can be for either component of the argument, however you are encouraged
to use more than 1 external source as relevant to your submission. Also please adopt 1 of the 4
major stances listed below. Don’t adopt any other stance. This ensures that your peers should be
reasonably expected to respond to the stance you adopt in your arguments.
Stances you can adopt for Question 3:
1. Fair and ethical
2. Fair but not ethical
3. Ethical but not fair
4. Neither fair nor ethical
Technical Requirements:
– Your post must include at least 3 paragraphs and be at least 300 words in total length
– External references are required – a minimum of 3, but be sure to cite all references you use
(other than the textbook – it is assumed you will use it)
Chapter 9 Achieving Operational Excellence and Customer Intimacy: Enterprise Applications 355
Adidas is a leading global maker of athletic shoes,
clothing, and accessories, selling 1.2 million pairs of
shoes each day. The company is headquartered in
Herzogenaurach, Germany, has over 57,000 employ-
ees worldwide, and produced net sales of 23.6 billion
Euros (U.S. $27 billion) in 2019. It is the second larg-
est sportswear manufacturer in the world after Nike.
Adidas is also a leader in digital and online mar-
keting. The company’s most important store is no
longer a physical store—it’s a website. The Adidas
website is a key channel for offering connected
and personalized customer experiences that help
differentiate Adidas from competitors and lead to
increased sales. E-commerce is Adidas’s most profit-
able point-of-sale channel, with online sales reaching
5.509 billion Euros (U.S. $6.180 billion) in 2019.
Adidas does not compete on price but on the qual-
ity of its brand and the customer experience. The
transition from brick-and-mortar to digital as the
preferred shopping medium has shaped the way the
company keeps up with changing customer prefer-
ences. Customers are clearly at the center of Adidas’s
business, and their experience with other online
retailers such as Amazon has made them want a rela-
tionship with Adidas that is more personal.
To serve customers better and manage all of its
relationships with them, Adidas turned to Salesforce.
com, which features cloud-based tools for customer
relationship management (CRM) and application de-
velopment. Salesforce.com helps Adidas identify key
customer segments, develop closer ties to custom-
ers, and design differentiated experiences tailored to
each customer’s needs. Salesforce CRM tools make it
possible for Adidas to have a single view of each cus-
tomer across all the various channels through which
that person interacts with the company.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud is a CRM platform that
allows marketers to create and manage marketing
relationships and campaigns with customers. The
Marketing Cloud incorporates integrated solutions for
customer journey management, email, mobile, social
media, web personalization, advertising, content cre-
ation, content management, and data analysis. Every
imaginable customer interaction and engagement is
covered. The software includes predictive analytics
to help make decisions such as, for example, what
channel would be preferable for a given message. A
component called Journey Builder helps marketers
tailor campaigns to customers’ behavior and needs, de-
mographics, and communication channel preferences.
The Marketing Cloud is connected to Salesforce.
com’s Sales Cloud and Service Cloud to provide a uni-
fied experience and prevent customers from being
contacted separately by representatives from sales,
marketing, and service
366 Part Three Key System Applications for the Digital Age
The modern supply chain is incredibly fragile.
Companies have built global supply chains based
on outsourcing to external suppliers and incred-
ibly thin margins of safety stock. (Safety stock is an
additional quantity of an item held by a company
in inventory in order to reduce the risk that the
item will be out of stock.) The prevailing wisdom
in supply chain management has embraced “leanâ€
principles that try to optimize costs by minimizing
safety stock, using “just in time†delivery to keep
only 15–30 days of products on hand, and concen-
trating sourcing in a few countries. For example,
over 80 percent of manufacturing facilities that pro-
duce components for drugs in the United States are
located abroad, mainly in China. Many companies
found it cheaper to manufacture goods in China and
elsewhere in Asia, rather than do so closer to home.
Auto parts, fashion, technology, medical gear, and
drug components are especially vulnerable to sup-
ply chain disruptions in Asia.
To make supply chains more resilient, businesses
need to eliminate their dependence on sourcing
from a single supplier, region, or country. Large com-
panies can build regional supply chains and diversify
the location of their manufacturing plants and their
suppliers (see the Chapter 15 Interactive Session on
Management). They should also consider pulling
back from inventory-optimization and safety stock
calculations that optimize costs by keeping stock to a
minimum and build some level of reserves to absorb
shocks, even if this increases costs.
The cost of manufacturing has been one of the
key justifications for moving manufacturing off-
shore. However, the labor cost component of manu-
facturing has been steadily growing smaller as new
automation tools have been developed. Thirty years
ago, when labor costs represented 30 to 40 percent
of the cost to manufacture goods, U.S. manufactur-
ers were tempted to move production offshore to
Chinese factories replete with low-cost laborers
assembling products by hand. Today, the trend is
toward more automated factories, which lower the
labor component and reduce profit-and-loss pres-
sures. U.S. leadership in factory automation will
The COVID-19 pandemic has tested supply
chains like no other event in recent history.
Entire populations were isolating and
quarantining, creating spikes in demand for certain
products (such as hand sanitizer) and large drops
in demand for others. Many businesses were shut-
tered for months, with small businesses, retail stores,
and restaurants especially hard-hit. Large drops in
demand, shortfalls in cash flow, worldwide port
congestion, factory shutdowns, and disruptions
to air cargo, trucking, and rail services paralyzed
companies all over the world.
Customers changed their purchasing habits.
Many started
