CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Supply chain encompasses several business entities including suppliers, manufacturers, wholesalers, distributors, retailers and customers concerned with ensuring the flow of raw materials, component parts or finished goods from the source to the final destination, organizations can no longer detached from these business entities (Adebayo, 2012). As stated by (Gunasekaran et al., 2003), companies cannot run away from being part of SCM in either operational or strategic level of implementation. In the traditional way, companies just buy the raw material, process it to become final product and distribute it to the customers. At the strategic level of implementation, the focus is more toward fulfilling customer’s requirement and satisfaction.
Supply chain management can help a company achieve the true return on investment of customer relationship management (CRM) systems, making it easier to see how well-managed and efficient supply chain operations have a significant bearing on the organization’s overall financial performance. One important benefit is that supply chain management reduces the time required for a new product or service to progress from the initial concept to its final delivery to the market. Indeed, a key objective of supply chain management is to bring new ideas to market faster, whether they are innovations from in-house or ideas gleaned from elsewhere that an enterprise needs to transform into deliverable products faster than its competitors. Because it is the gateway to the market for any business, supply chain management adds value to the time an organization spends developing new products and services.
Indicators of an organization’s financial performance are already recognized as being the income statement and the balance sheet reports. The income statement measures profitability over