Defining Supply Chain in Your Business

A supply chain is the system of organizations, people, technology, activities, information and resources involved in moving a product or service or The flow of resources into and out of the enterprise's collective operations. An IT supply chain is the flow of resources into and out of its IT operations.

Every firm has a collection of activities that are performed to design, produce market, deliver and support its products. In another words we can say that supply chain creates values and costs in a specific business from the production of goods to the delivery of the products and services to the final consumers.
In any organization different chains and linkages are developed for efficient and effective utilization of resources of enterprises. Different processes that make up the supply chains can be categorized as follows.

1. Inbound logistics.
2. Operations.
3. Outbound logistics.
4. Marketing and Sales.
5. Servicing.

Inbound Logistics: This term represents the sequence of bringing raw material from the suppliers to the manufacturer. Various costs are involved in this process like; supplier inspection, supplier selection and transportation. An organization must bear the costs of are possibility involved in inbound logistics.
Operations: The word operation refers the set of all activities are concerned in converting the raw material into finish goods.

Outbound Logistics: It indicates the process of transferring the finish goods to the final consumers through various distribution channels.

Marketing and Sales: The term marketing and sales vouch for all those activities which are performed by the company to attract its customers through various marketing tools for getting the targeted sales hits.

Servicing: It means to provide quality and value added services to the customers.
It is important for the management to provide proper support for the above mentioned activities by making the most of valuable and workable techniques and methods such as _ technological development, procurement, firm infrastructure and human resource management.

The strategies used in the supply chain may be helpful for the company in order to operate, compete in the global market and supply chain work into global sourcing. In addition to it the company may analysis the benefits and costs relating to the supply operations for boosting up the performance, thus upon focusing the strategies of supply chain an organization may meet the targeted goals.

Supply chain management is another term that is associated with supply chain; it is the oversight of the materials, information and finance that are distributed from supplier to the customers. It involves an interaction between the company and the customers; it regulates the coordination and flow of materials within a company to the final consumers.

There supply chain management can be divided into three parts.

Product: The product is anything that is manufactured by the operation department of any enterprise, thus when a company moves goods to supplier the process of transferring the goods in this way is called product flow under the term of supply chain management.

Information: A customer gives order to the company for delivering the goods at a certain time or at certain place. The process of sending the order information and informing about the status of delivery is known as the information flow under supply chain management.

Financial: The term includes terms, conditions credit terms, payment schedules and all additional arrangements which are involved in the process of delivering the finished goods from the company to the customers is called financial flow under the term of supply management chain.