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Actors in a Supply Network

Paper Type: Free Essay Subject: Business
Wordcount: 1939 words Published: 13th Sep 2017

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Summary

The supply chain involves the steps it takes to get a good or service from the supplier to the customers. Supply chain management is an important process for different companies, and Supply chain sustainability is a holistic viewpoint of supply chain processes and technologies that go beyond the focus of distribution, account and old-style views of cost. Next in supply network, there are some actors which are linked with each other. They put their role in sustainability business to supply network. In this network comes the marketing agents on whom the small farmers depend a lot for selling their agricultural products. They also depend on many other agents like wholesalers and retailers to sell their products. Channel Intelligence makes it easier for consumers to find and buy products online. It helps retailers, manufacturers and agencies determination product sales with its Shopping Engine Services and Where-to-Buy.

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The supply network created amongst different companies producing, handling and distributing a specific product. Specifically, the supply chain involves the steps it takes to get a good or service from the supplier to the customers. Supply chain management is an important process for different companies, and Supply chain sustainability is a holistic viewpoint of supply chain processes and technologies that go beyond the focus of distribution, account and old-style views of cost. This developing philosophy is based on the principle that socially responsible products and practices are not only good for the environment, but are important for long-term.

Actors in supply network

http://www.ictinagriculture.org/ictinag/sites/ictinagriculture.org/files/8285-1001%20copy.jpghttp://ap.fftc.agnet.org/upload/images/ap/ap_policy/512/4f1.jpg

Role of actors in supply network-

We know that in common agricultural task is taken care of by minor farmers. Statistics says that there are around 570 million farms in the world and most of them are run by small farmers who are single person or families. The agricultural supply chain is mainly divided into five namely input, manufactures, processing, sales and output supply (circulation). But this supply chain has one big issue. It has an extended marketing chain which includes agents known as middleman to market the agricultural products to the customers. And as said earlier most of them are small farmers so they can’t afford transportation and marketing expenses to sell their products. They have to rely on agents. A person will collect from small farmers and send it to processors, then to large wholesalers, then retailers and finally to the customers. So it is a multifaceted task. Farmers have to depend on many middle links before it reaches the customers. Apart from these agricultural products are featured in many other ways like its homogeneousness, seasonality, weight, delicate nature and not in normal size. So it needs distinct supply chain from post-harvest care, treating, packaging, storage facilities and transportation. But this is not over. Small farmers face the problem of pricing. As they are single farmers, there quantity is not bulk from agent’s side. But from their side they want to sell all produce at one go as they do not have storage space, perishable nature etc. So here the agent manipulate the price and exploit the farmers by giving them low price for their produce. They have no bargaining power with the agents resulting in less income and profit at the end of the day. They accept the price offered to them by the agents. This supply chain network supports three main points – physical movement of produce, finance and information which organises physical and finance.

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This supply chains are either domestic or international. Domestic are the ones where produce is transferred from one point to other in the same town, city or country. Whereas international is the one where the produce is exported to other country end users. So here some agents are specialised in one chain task whereas some are involved in more than one chain activity. A good example is of a large rich farmer who produces and provides transportation as well. Whereas on the other side small retail outlets only sell agriculture products to consumers. The public and the private sector play a good role in supporting the supply chain both technically and financially. But again this all depends on the trends. Like in the religious festivals, summer holidays, etc the demand is more as compared to the normal days. So each chain agent has to plan and organise its activity accordingly and be ready for the market demand. Here the first person who collects the produce plays an important role. Small farmers wait for these collectors as they can’t afford to carry their small produce to the collection centres.

http://ap.fftc.agnet.org/ap_db.php?id=512&print=1

Support structure

Support structure is divided into three sections like computer applications, operations and management which are totally depend on sustainability business.

https://www.bsc.es/sites/default/files/public/about/organization/23072012organigrama-support.jpg

Computer application support means technical support which refers to after sales service given to the buyer of any electronic gadgets or goods. In overall, technical support services includes solving the problem of the customer on phone or by email on the internet. They don’t train the customers but show them a way to solve the issue. Most of the time companies does this free of cost but sometimes in some technical type of service they tell the charge in advance before they provide the service. Technical support may be delivered by phone or by log in the company account. Superior organizations often have interior technical support accessible to their work for computer-related difficulties. The Internet can also be a good source for easily available tech support, where knowledgeable users help users find solutions to their problems. In adding, some fee-based service companies charge for first-class technical support service.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_support

Coming to operations, when employment and sustaining a workforce continue flexible, company’s operation can appeal a larger number of brilliant employees. Flexible work schedules can contain telecommuting, shared work duties and compressed workweeks. A support structure in operations gives flexibility to the employees and in return job satisfaction.By writing this type of policies and job classifications that include options for flexible schedule options, companies may increase productivity from 20 to 60 per cent, according to Strategies for operation. Next, by going through management, the time when managers decline to change or give employees options to work flexible schedules, they delay the process. Inflexible managers maintaining on supervision the actions of employees hold you back from becoming a more quick organization. Full policies can provide the support structure for managers to successfully manage work through various streams. They can further take extra step and develop some more productive policies to bring positive change in the company.

http://smallbusiness.chron.com/support-structures-must-place-meet-needs-flexible-organization-24421.html

Strategic intelligence

Strategic intelligence in simple words relate to collection of date, analysing that data and give that data to management to make strategic moves for the company. It is used when the company is in the mood to do something big or grand. It’s all about big change in the policy and procedures of the company. It’s when you are the person who is driving the whole company. All is done for making their business sustainable for long period of time.

Channel Intelligence

Channel Intelligence makes it easier for consumers to find and buy products online. It helps retailers, manufacturers and agencies determination product sales with its Shopping Engine Services and Where-to-Buy. It has dedicated team who helps you grow your business by enhancing promo offers on line, improve the quality of feed on the website, and make a user friendly experience for the customers.

The above picture shows three levels in which in first level only the products were made and sent to consumer, but in level second the requirements and demands were high of products so; there was a need of retailer to manage the products. In addition, the demand of products was increasing with each passing the day that is why organisation has to hire more retailers so that it would be easy to maintain the products. This is channel intelligence which has made it easy to find and buy products.

Conclusion

To put it in a nutshell, I would like to establish the above discussion; it is evident that the supply network created amongst different companies producing, handling and distributing a specific product. Specifically, the supply chain involves the steps it takes to get a good or service from the supplier to the customers, and how the different actors linked with each other’s, and how the channel intelligence makes  it easy for customer to find and buy products online.

References

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_support

http://ap.fftc.agnet.org/ap_db.php?id=512&print=1

http://smallbusiness.chron.com/support-structures-must-place-meet-needs-flexible-organization-24421.html

 

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