Supply Chain Management Strategies For Landmark Group Dubai

Overview of Landmark Group Dubai

Landmark Group is a multinational company based in Dubai, UAE directed by Micky Jagtiani, who is the chairperson and founder of the organization. The group is involved in the retailing of footwear, cosmetics, apparel, consumer electronics, baby products, home improvement, and beauty products. The organization also has interests in healthcare, mall management and, various in-house brands and operates with other brands, acting as a retailer.

It mainly concentrates on the MENA region, which has a large presence in India and other countries involving Pakistan, Turkey, Tanzania, Kenya, Sri Lanka, India, Kuwait, Oman, Egypt, Lebanon, Libya, Yemen, Nigeria, Zambia, Malaysia, and Thailand. It is established in 1973 with a single store in Bahrain, has productively grown into one of the biggest and leading hospitality and retail corporations in Middle East, Africa, and the Indian subcontinent, with a substantial global footprint. It constantly strives to offer excellent value, which has over 55,000 employees, currently operates over 2300 outlets with 57 brands and retail presence of over 30 million sq. ft. across 22 countries (Deepa and Chitramani, 2013)

The role of the supply chain function is that the quantity intake plan is balanced to meet business constraints at a nominal level and safeguards that it can maintain a good intake balance, which can be executed as per the overall merchandise lifecycle strategy and plan. It will create an intake plan at a nominal level and work backward from in-store launch date to the vendor manufacturing date and issue key milestones dates for every possible option. They will provide significant information in the operation planning to meet the expectation of the consumer. It provides a good understanding and knowledge of vendor production facilities, able to deliver as per time and plan ((Zamberi Ahmad and Ahmad, 2016).        

1. Determine a 10-point plan, which will make sure that supply chain function remains significant to the organization objectives.   

Ans. 10-point plan

• Background-The organization has also diversified its business operations into wellness, leisure, hotels segment with Landmark leisure i.e. chain of confectionary stores for teens and children, and indoor entertainment centers working with Candelite, Fun City, Fun Works, and Fun Ville. It also operates Foodmark, which involves franchise & home-grown brand such as Zafran, and joint venture brands such as Max Burgers, Bazerkhan, Ushna, Carluccio’s, Max’s, The Meat Company, La Gaufrette, Tribes, and Nando’s. They also operate with Fitness and wellness centers, Balance Salon and Spa, comfortable budget hotels, relaxation, and grooming centers (Singh, 2011).
• Opportunity-Their main opportunity is to enhance their success, which lies in efficient operations, efficient business strategy, talented people, and concentrate on logistics and operation management. They always seek to pursue new talent to encourage our team and seek professionals who are excited to do their life best work.
• Objectives- Their main objective is continuing to deliver exceptional value, constant innovation, and outstanding customer experience. Their stores boast an impressive and expressive range of home center, fashion, baby care products with leading international brands. They provide an innovative, friendly, fun, fast-paced, and inspiring environment to nurture the talent and continuously refining skillsets and strategies (Chowhan, 2013).
• Targets-Landmark Group is close to hitting the targets its $1 million revenue target, where it operates Lifestyle brands, Max Fashions, Home Centre, and other brands to a maximum extent. They target 30 to 35 percent growth after collaboration with French supermarket operator and earned $600 million in India (Dani, 2014).
• Message- Their main vision is to maintain a sense of leadership by dynamic, visionary, and hands-on leadership guides in every step on the way. They have communicated the message of always look ahead and develop today to achieve tomorrow (Baskaran, 2012).
• Strategy-It is believed that they can strategies themselves in moving more and more towards fulfilling their lifestyle needs and becoming health-conscious products, which are beneficial to the customers. They have set an example of the yesterday acquisition, which is an aggressive growth strategy. They are planning a $150 million expansion across the region starting with 150 new stores this year (Trebbin, 2014).
• Channels- They have cones up with an online marketplace, which aims to promote its channel strategy in the country wherein a customer can shop online from offline stores. They have currently launched its E-Commerce website i.e. LandmarkShops.in to make available to the customer. It is stated that recently the organization has retail chains involving Max Retail and Lifestyle in the country (Lee and Jain, 2009).
• Timetable-They should maintain an exceptional value to the customers, which is the cornerstone of the company values. They should first generate effort steer towards continued delivery of the promise to our customers through our products and exceptional service.  Then they become capable, diligent, and active in managing the leadership team to understand its role in executing severe risk metrics, financial discipline, and corporate governance (Mitra and Thorpe, 2011).
• Budget-It is stated that by allocating budget in a sufficient manner to plans to launch new hotel brands and more mid-market hotels in the near future. The budgets which are planned to result in cost reduction (Notteboom and Rodrigue, 2012)
• Evaluation- Now, these strategies are evaluated to make a lead towards international expansion and growth in the hospitality sector. It simply generates a brand that caters to the market (Thorpe and Mitra, 2012).

1. Discuss 3 supply chain management strategies that assist in attaining its goals.

Ans.  Supply chain management strategies that help the management in attaining its goals are-

• Strategic Sourcing- It helps the management to define the way data and information are collected and utilized so that an organization can influence its purchasing power to find the potential values in the marketplace. It cannot maintain the importance of operating in a cooperative manner. Their main concept is to develop and maintain channels of supply at the best lowest total cost, including the lowest purchase price. It focuses upon traditional purchasing activities to include all the doings within the procurement cycle, from the requirement to receipt and payment of goods and services. However, the strategic sourcing primarily concentrates on decreasing costs, with maintaining a long-term relationship with key suppliers to attain a competitive advantage. It is significant that both supplier and buyer collaborate and share data and information to recognize opportunities that will progressively enhance savings indefinitely. Its overall objective is to support the ultimate goal of attaining and sustaining an organization’s competitive advantage and bring success. The key concern of executives is to manage the cost of purchased goods and services (Wang et al., 2016).
• Lean Manufacturing-Lean supply chain management is not for those organizations who manufacture goods but by companies who streamline their products and methods to eliminate waste and hazardous activities. The companies have a number of areas in their supply chain activities where waste can be recognized as costs, time, and inventory. They are looking to prospect better technologies to help them in improving procurement processes and business operations. This strategy gained popularity in the manufacturing part where there is a possibility of significant improvement, which reduces waste and maximum resources to maintain operational performance. Having zero defects in the manufacturing process, increase efficiency and reduce waste in the businesses as a whole. Landmark Group Dubai should adopt lean supply strategies to examine bill of materials, equipment, and routings to recognize where improvements can be attained. It also businesses to evaluate every method and process in their supply chain activities and recognize areas that are utilized excessive resources and information, which can be measured in dollars. It will enhance the company’s overall profitability and competitiveness (Martínez-Jurado and Moyano-Fuentes, 2014).
• Inventory Management-It is important to maintain a relationship with supplier and customer to develop a good understanding and integrate inventory system. It is an important aspect of efficiently maintaining supply chains. In many cases, this cooperative relationship management has been considered as the principle of supply chain management. It is the most difficult and important role, which plays in the supply chain to maintain the balance of demand and supply. It is to be efficiently managing the flow in the supply chain, as a company has to deal with upstream supplier exchanges and downstream customer demands. Inventory management strategy is very important to balance the equilibrium of achieving the demands of the customers, as it is often very hard to predict accuracy, precision, and maintain the sufficient supply of goods and materials. It can be attained using strategic information sharing for better inventory management. They used point-of-sale data in the retail industry for inventory management and business operations. This help inventories decisions to be used effectively and efficiently when supply inflows are required to handle demand outflows (Brandenburg et al., 2014).      

1. Evaluate the efficiency of strategies used by the organization to develop a relationship with suppliers.

Ans.   It is believed by the majority of an organization that their real assets are surrounded in the relationship quality shared between the company and their stakeholders such as employees, suppliers, customers, and clients. Managing and developing a relationship with suppliers is the most important criteria to bring success and growth in the organization.

• Strategic Sourcing-It is the ongoing method of finding the best suppliers and utilizes the relationship of suppliers to maximize the objective of an organization. It satisfies the needs of the business from markets via the planned and proactive analysis of supply markets and the identification of suppliers with the objective of offering solutions to meet agreed and pre-determined needs.  It helps us to reduce the total and marginal costs of acquisition while developing service and quality. It helps in maintaining procurement costs through efficient delivering and maintenance of demonstration in various corporations. It is seen that if these strategies are aligned specifically then success and growth can be achieved. It broadens the list of participating vendors and improves return on investment to maintain a stable and productive relationship (Brunswicker and Vanhaverbeke, 2015).
• Lean Manufacturing-It has believed that lean manufacturing is the most effective strategy used by the organization, which speeds up the production and distribution by the removal of waste and harmful toxics from the operations and simplify the methods. They use “Just in Time” as a next method to eliminate the waste from the system. It leads the path towards to make the things in small quantities i.e. large inventories, high capital, high-speed machinery, huge setup expenses, high lead times and defects costs. It also encouraged cooperating as a team and handling many specialized tasks. They provide training of handling such minor equipment repairs and housekeeping to understand the functioning. This strategy is very helpful in the quality of work accomplished at each stage to coordinate with the supplier. The company should treat the suppliers as their partners and are trained at each point to decrease the stocks, setup times, and breakdowns. They should maximize the availability of maintaining supplier relationship with suppliers and uses JIT process to handle operations. It helps to innovate in sustaining and gaining competitive advantage (Roh, Hong and Min, 2014).
• Inventory Management-It has been stated that the emergence of Information Technology has taken business its place and brought new solutions with new opportunities and challenges. Inventory Management is a major concern, which maintains the correct staff level and carries department meetings to solve the means and problems with the inventory control framework. It maintains the settings to decrease depth of the inventory, probability of excess stock, build develop width of inventory, and obsolescence. It is seen that managing inventory is an important part of well-organized and successful business organization. It helps in managing and controlling inventory in a very effective and efficient manner. It helps the organization to keep a track on its customers, item movement, and suppliers between different branches. It also provides the business with asset management methods to enhance company productivity and warehouse. If it is managed properly, then it is possible that it will probably eliminate the technical errors of an inventory control system. It will also save effort, time, and deliver accurate reports to the employees (Qrunfleh and Tarafdar, 2014).

1. Evaluate the Information Technology utilized by the organization to develop strategies in maintaining a relationship with suppliers.

Ans. It is believed that maintaining and building a relationship with suppliers is significant for the long-term purpose. The organization needs to retain and build a relationship with suppliers to achieve competitive advantage and continuous improvement. The information technology plays an importantrole in maintaining the relationship with partners as supplier enablement is the channel that uses to incorporate with their trade partners and e-procurement activities. The NewG is utilized by landmark Group Dubai to build a strong relationship.

Role of Supply Chain Function

The web-based applications utilized by the company i.e. software from both i2 technology and Microsoft, which has immensely assisted to maintain a supply chain structure that is practical, cost-effective, and potential for future growth and success. The implementation of the i2 supply chain software has allowed linking with the suppliers in real time after restricting any delay and has permitted to estimate the correct amount of raw material and resources required at manufacturing locations of Landmark Group Dubai. The i2 supply chain application was set up for the objective of planning, execution, and implementation of products and services (Govindan, et al., 2015).   

The i2 software helped the planning stage by collecting and gathering of needed raw material and resources from the suppliers and Landmark Group Dubai.  After that, the execution stage needed Landmark Group Dubai to have the correct amount of components in order to meet the needs of the customers. Then, the implementation part of the products and services will maintain the synchronization of the available material.

However, these steps assist to generate a more effective and efficient supply chain. It is believed that the i2 technology has helped the planning process because it has allowed the option of having suppliers associated with the supply chain system of Landmark Group Dubai through the web. This web-connected access is a protected extranet portal that acts association for suppliers (Schnackenberg and Tomlinson, 2016).       

The benefits can be gained as that the suppliers are provided the chance to view their material at Landmark Group Dubai, involving cost reports, engineering alterations, performance, demand/supply forecasting, and product quality. Therefore, it is believed that web-based applications i.e. i2 technologies could be benefited to the NewG in order to maintain the relationship with suppliers and enhance the productivity of the Landmark Group Dubai.

Supply chain management is termed as the science of incorporating the flow of information and goods from primary sourcing through delivery to the end user. There are the primary activities, which help to the end-to-end process, which involves production planning, inventory management, purchasing of raw material, order processing and fulfillment, improving customer service, transportation, and distribution of final product to the end-user (Trainor et al., 2014). It is stated that the management of the flow of information and goods have always been a primary factor of supply chain management.

The steady growth of web-based information and information technology transfer between their customers, companies, and their suppliers and has progressively enhanced the significance of information management in maintaining an effective and efficient supply chain. This is changing many methods and procedures within the supply chain from production and procurement to product design and customer management. The information technology maintains a relationship with a supplier in many ways-

• They can use E-Commerce to conduct business operations on a paperless environment and make use of Electronic Fund Transfer (EFT) and Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), which allow Landmark Group Dubai to move the data and information digitally between customers and suppliers.
• They can use Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), which helps in exchanging of business documents in a prescribed format electronically. It is the practice of communicating freely the information between two organizations digitally rather than using the traditional form of courier, mail, and fax. It helps in processing the information very speedily and provides effective and efficient customer service. It helps in transferring the information more electrically to reduce paperwork and enhance productivity. It helps in maintaining a relationship with suppliers as it is cost effective and secures a competitive advantage for the Landmark Group Dubai.
• They use Bar Coding and scanner, which are most evident in checkout counter of the supermarket. It maintains the other applications and software that track the moving items such as automobiles in assembly operations, manufacturing, and product placement.
• They use Data Warehouse, which is a consolidated database to be maintained separately from a Landmark Group Dubai production framework database. It is organized around information on business operations rather than specific business processes.
• They use Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), which is central to their IT infrastructure. ERP framework has become popular during a few decades, which reduce the manual activities, capture the data, and task-related to processing inventory management, financial, and customer service information. It achieves a high degree of integration of by using a single data entry, and maintains a common understanding of shared data and established a set of rules for processing data (Gunasekaran et al., 2015).

10-Point Plan for Supply Chain Management

It is stated that Landmark Group Dubai can use the information technologies to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the value chain activities.  It is a powerful and controlling tool for better supply chain management and developing the relationship with suppliers. It deals with internal operations i.e. production schedules and production quantities and Just in Time inventory management to buy more orders, a shift in demand, and accurate management of consumer preferences (Navimipour and Soltani, 2016).   

Landmark Group Dubai is the first retailer that experimented store-level point-of-sale systems, central database, and satellite network. They decided to eliminate the forces and move directly to suppliers and procure needed things. They have always negotiated with manufacturers, make an estimation of purchasing, and identify the cost structure. When merging with the use of barcodes, employees are capable of analyzing and acquire real-time store information.

In respect to Landmark Group Dubai’s distribution, its distribution centers are located in various areas and the organization divided each distribution centers into different parts according to the quality of products. The organization generally needs a frequency of a high percentage of products and inventory turnover in distribution centers before directly transporting to stores (Heckmann, Comes and Nickel, 2015).      

• Market review-In this Landmark Group Dubai needs to analyze the market as opportunities is generally triggered by a business requirement for a product or service. It might involve the components, equipment, raw material, resources needed for the complete finished product. It also embraces the service requirements, which involves the transportation carriers, computer programmers, maintenance service providers, and hazardous waste handlers. They need to analyze the situational undertaking, which involves purchase requisitions, which involves estimated time cost, date of requisition, description of required material or service, the quantity of material. It is specified that the marketing department should purchase an advertising campaign. The research and department require a clinical trial and human resource department should print a brochure. This market review will tell us the complete understanding of the prospective market and dealing with the aim and objectives of the customers (Carbonara and Pellegrino, 2017).
• Review of the supplier’s capabilities- The Landmark Group Dubai should understand the capabilities of the suppliers. Procurement must collaborate with the suppliers and its internal consumers to evaluate the method and procedures to understand where opportunities exist to remove waste and enhance value delivery. It is utilized for non-routine supply items of extreme value. They maintain the good record of accomplishment of existing suppliers, which should not be ruled out. They plan and control system that schedule, release, and control the flow of work in an organization. It can have a major effect on the performance of the supply chain. They should maintain a Performa to accomplish the suppliers’ capabilities and motivate them in order to achieve success (Paras, Pal and Ekwall, 2018).
• Link with supply chain- They has to make a bond and attractive international suppliers, maintaining a good relationship with suppliers and sourcing new products. They should maintain a link with the suppliers to develop a close understanding and ensure the quality of the product offered by suppliers. They are more aware of customer taste, national trends, and local needs. This helps in creating links with the population as well. They should interact with the suppliers at a given point of time and enhance efficiency over time for further optimization in accumulating experience and minimizes the cost over time. They should coordinate the channel by periodic inventory and closely watch upon the pricing, channel of integration, and promotion, which is a key area to work. It is predicted that if the company has a good relationship with their suppliers, they can achieve success and growth in the future. They can achieve by maintaining an association with their suppliers and earn higher profits with respect to the customer relationship (Ahi and Searcy, 2015).
• Order to suppliers- Then they give orders to suppliers as the need to decide the amount of quantity, quality of the product, and technologies required to assess the integrated supply chain management of the company. The applications of information technology as RFID make the process of ordering very smooth. By utilizing these technologies, customers and employees can easily attain real-time information about all merchandise warehoused in distribution centers. When the supply of products is ordered in a definite time and purpose then only it can be produced, manufactured, and finally delivered to the customers (Aguezzoul, 2014).
• Procurement of products- The, procurement of products is to be identified as acquiring and purchasing the appropriate goods and services at the best potential cost to meet the needs and expectations of the consumer. It delivers a wide range of advantages of supporting the strategic organizational objectives. It includes lower cost of production, increased efficiency, and enhanced quality of products, risk reduction, greater benefit, and innovation. It also generates a higher-profit margin and popularity over other competitors through monitoring the receipt, approval, and review of the flow of items into the organization through the suppliers. They should take a proper feedback and assess time to time in managing the procurement and distribution of the product. It is believed that attainment and implementation of possible results could be achieved only when supply can be achieved (Rezaei et al., 2016).
• Transportation-After all this, they should focus on transporting all the products in their units to deliver to their customer in a large amount. It has been seen that intermodal transportation shows a remarkable growth. It presents an attempt to the development and growth of an analytical framework for transporting the finished products irrespective of hazardous materials. They should plan, manage, and maintain intermodal shipments to delivering the finished products at the stipulated time to the customers. They should convey the assigned load units to the utilization of anticipated quality product, and transportation cost will be minimized to set the operations and cost of the management (Kozlenkova et al., 2015).
• Environmental Compliance- They need to concentrate on environmental regulation is a big part of today’s scenario. It is to be taken care of delivering products to customers irrespective of producing hazardous free products. It is the responsibility of the suppliers to maintain an environmentally friendly environment. The suppliers’ ability to comply with the regulations is an important concern for supply chain management. They should adopt methods and processes to make the strategy of incorporating environmentally friendly environment. Then, deliver the shipment at one of its distribution warehouse and with others on the way to individual stores respective to the customers. It assesses and procures to maintain deliveries at their respective time and with a proper plan of considering, the contingencies occurred in the overall plan (França et al., 2017).

Logistics and Warehousing

Landmark Group Dubai is successful in operating its private warehouse system. A powerful transport system is the highlight of their logistics infrastructure, which is serving for distribution centers. It helps to handle the cost in a very effective manner, reduce the inventory costs, operating costs, as well as enhancing the efficiency of distribution and saving the space. They should make changes in macro as well as microenvironment, and enhancing competition from other retail stores. It can also improve the image and increasing profit margin of the Landmark Group Dubai (Wagner and Eggert, 2016).        

Currently, Landmark Group Dubai operates global sourcing. There has been a constant evolution in the operation, procurement, distribution, and logistics strategy of the organization. It is the time when there is a direct delivery from supplier to the stores and then it transformed into the regional distribution system. After that, it was the vertical collaboration in the supply chain. Under its vertical collaboration, a strategy the main concentration is on streamlining the supply chain processes with the sharing of information across the supply chain and completes usage of technology to develop an efficient and effective supply chain. This is following with analysis of manufacturing to distribution centers to embrace the changes that added net value over the supply chain (Abbasi and Nilsson, 2016).  

Supply Chain Management Strategies

It is believed that once the distribution was stabilized, there was motivation to make the flow of raw material and logistics streamline to create cost-benefit competence. This leads to the cooperation of more competitive distribution rates, improvement, and constant change, which led to a reduction in lead-time to suppliers. They can involve to delivered the products to the warehouse from the suppliers, distribution to the stores, and finally position the products on display. It has been a major focus on increasing the space contribution in hypermarkets.

By this, Landmark Group Dubai can reach the maximum level of the supply chain and the competitors target the logistics operations.  It is evident that managing international operations has been a challenge for Landmark Group Dubai. Due to global sourcing, there has been a change in the Continuous Replenishment Policy as embraced by the organization to increase the overall supply chain profitability. However, to develop the international standards and positive brand image, there has been a high-cost occurrence on the transportation of the goods (Ghadimi et al., 2016).  

SUPPLY CHAIN DEPARTMENT
RISK TEMPLATE – GT 6 ROTOR
		A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H	I
		IDENTIFIED RISK / CHALLENGES	PROBABILITY              (1-5)	IMPACT                  (1-5)	SCORE           (B x C)	RISK	PLANT SERVICEABILITY IMPACT	BUSINESS IMPACT	RISK MITIGATION / CONTINGENCY PLAN	ACTION STATUS
ROTOR MOVE RISK	1	Delay in loading Cargo	3	3	9	Medium	penalty from client for not  meeting required megawatts in the contract	affecting power reliability in the medium to long term	careful coordination of move in line with shipping line. All parties that is , logistics, freight forwarder and inspector now in standby mode	on going
2	Shipment at stormy weather	3	5	15	Extreme	High winds can generate the swell waves, which can break the back of the ships and large wind waves that can tumble ships.	Shippers are ready to pay superior freight for shipping services, which gives Just in Time deliveries.	Identifying a particular threat that can cause harm to hardware, network components, and personnel, which can develop effective corrective measures.	Continuing
3	Offloading from the vessel	3	4	12	High	Vessel operations exceed environmental standards.	It affects the accuracy of the business operations.	The industry should greatly regulate with requirements to safeguard them.	Continuing
4	Possibility of damage	2	5	10	Medium	It always includes non-routine activities and can expose to a variety of risks.	It will affect the productivity disruption and positive reputation permanently.	They should provide an early-warning framework and financial as well as social support from private damages.	On-going
5	Proper lifting protocol is not followed	4	4	16	Extreme	It is stated that carelessly performing an operation and various hazards.	It will affect the management of the organization as generate hazardous handling of material.	They should take care of unsafe work practices and manage exposures to health and safety.	Continuing
	6	Sea blast during weather	3	5	15	Extreme	Discharge of hazardous pollutants to marine ecosystems leads to harm the system.	It will affect as bad weather can increase the loss of revenue because of delay in shipping.	They need to develop a bad weather communication plan to align operations.	Continuing
7	Industrial unrest	2	4	8	Medium	It leads to poor working conditions and if workers are frustrated then the conflict between management and labour embrace economic struggle.	It hampers production and manufacturing, as well as profit and grievance, occurs between management and labour.	They should strengthen contingency plan to safeguard the needs of the employees so that they can continue their work.	On-going
8	Unsuitable incoterms	3	3	9	Medium	The seller is unable to pay the duty for the transport, which limits the choice of carrier.	It includes failures to develop how terminal handling charges are to be treated.	They should develop a common understanding of the terms and conditions of the causes of disagreement.	On-going
9	Injury of workman	4	5	20	Extreme	If a worker is injured can result in a loss in operating the machinery as another worker needs to take training.	The overall productivity gets low and hiring and gives training to a new employee is very time-consuming and expensive	They should educate and provide training to employees about keeping them safe during moving and lifting.	Continuing
10	Incompetent crew and damaged ship	1	5	5	Low	It leads to miscommunication and collision accidents among ships continue to occur.	It gives rise to civil liability and causes damage or loss to the suppliers.	They need to provide proper training and monitoring that helps them to lead the work and avoid damages	On-going
11	Berthing delay	3	4	12	High	It is stated that delay in shipping decreases carrier capacity.	It reduces relationships with customer and service punctuality is a major concern.	They should maintain the engine’s readiness and carry out maintenance for the operations.	Continuing

Contingency Plan

Objective

The scenario, which tends to the implementation of the plan are industrial unrest, delay in loading cargo, and injury in workman, industrial action, and staff strike in the workplace.  

Summary  

The Contingency plan depends on the resources available and the size of the organization at a specific time. The business is affected by the absenteeism or resignation of the HR manager, which termed as the organization will not be capable to handle the operations effectively and efficiently. The business can continue with the operations with the assistance of competent and effective workers. The contingency plan is developed if there is a delay in shipment and needs to improve the business operations (Moussaoui et al., 2016).  

Plan Process

The HR of the organization will handle the workforce management if he/she is not available then the organization may not be able to mitigate the problems faced by the paid personnel. However, the Power Plant International organization has to perform the operations to attract, induce, and retain the personnel. The manager of the organization needs to perform the operations on the behalf of the HR manager so that the other activities of the organization will not get affected. Additionally, they can monitor the time and resources that they will need to perform the operations effectively and efficiently (Sawik, 2016).

Emergency Contact Details (hypothetical)

Company	Contact Name	Contact Number
Power Plant International	Christopher Shah Human Resource Advisor	1300 54 56 34
Power Plant International	A.K. Narran General Manager	1300 45 23 56
Power Plant International	William Jones Accountant	1300 56 43 21

Review Process

IT Strategies for Supplier Relationship Management

              Approval

Title	Name	Date
Approval for the actions and activities for employees	Robert Clinton	20th October 2018
Approval for the pricing policies within the organization	A.K. Narran General Manager	20th October 2018
Approval for a penalty in delay	William Jones Accountant	20th October 2018

           (Xing and Zhong, 2017)

1. Describe the necessary shipping documents that are needed for clearance of cargo at the port

Ans. There are legal, specific, and common documents on a commodity basis needed to complete import customs procedures.

• Bill of Entry- It is the main import document needed for import customs clearance, which is to be filed by importer duly signed or CHA.
• Bill of Lading- This document is under sea shipment or Airway bill, which is a carrier’s document needed to be provided with customs for import customs clearance.
• Import License- It is required for formalities and procedures of customs clearance under particular products.
• Insurance Certificate- It is the major documents, which is a supportive document in against of importer’s announcement in terms of delivery.
• Letter of Credit- Purchasing Order or Letter of Credit is one of the documents, which determined all terms, and conditions of the sale contract.
• Industrial License-An industrial license copy is needed under specific importing of goods, which can be submitted to customs authorities (Koley, Datta and Mukherjee, 2016).

1. Discuss the various payment options highlighting the advantages and disadvantages to client and shipper.

Ans. The various payment options identified are-

• Cash- It is a payment method generally used for goods and cash-on-delivery transactions.

Advantages to the shipper-

The payment risk can be reduced as it is assured that it meets the terms and conditions of the letter of credit.

Disadvantages to the shipper-

It is slower as distinguished with another method of payment and risk occurs when the organization does not fulfill the obligations i.e. delay in shipping and not meet the terms and conditions.

Advantages to the client-

They only make the payment when the shipment has been delivered and documents have been presented that meet the expectations. However, if any loss or damage occurs, they will get the compensation for the loss.

Disadvantages to the client-

They may not receive the goods affected by the earthquake, flood, or tsunami, will influence their business activity (Domenica et al., 2015).

• Credit Cards- It is a common method for customers to pay online.

Advantages to the shipper-

It can increase the sales of the company and improves the cash flow. It also helps in receives cash easier and faster.

Disadvantages to the shipper-

It pays a transaction fee and percentage of the sale amount of the organization.

Advantages to the client-

It offers additional protection in the form of purchases that may be lost, stolen, and damaged.

Disadvantages to the client-

It is the minimum due amount that is presented at the top of a billing statement (Taylor, 2016).

• Ewallets-It stores personal data and funds, which are utilized to purchase from online stores.

Advantages to the Shipper-It can increase a cost on local economies.  

Disadvantages to the shipper-The main advantage are lack of trust, which is having a security risk.

Advantages to the Client-It can prevent clients from replication activity

Disadvantages to the client- They face fraud, low reliability, and lack of security (Liu, Pancras and Houtz, 2015). 

References

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Aguezzoul, A. (2014) Third-party logistics selection problem: A literature review on criteria and methods. Omega, 49, pp.69-78.

Ahi, P. and Searcy, C. (2015) An analysis of metrics used to measure performance in green and sustainable supply chains. Journal of Cleaner Production, 86, pp.360-377.

Baskaran, K. (2012) The FDI permit for multi brand retail trading in India-Green signal or Red signal. Business Intelligence Journal, 5(1), pp.176-186.

Brandenburg, M., Govindan, K., Sarkis, J. and Seuring, S. (2014) Quantitative models for sustainable supply chain management: Developments and directions. European journal of operational research, 233(2), pp.299-312.

Brunswicker, S. and Vanhaverbeke, W. (2015) Open innovation in small and medium?sized enterprises (SMEs): External knowledge sourcing strategies and internal organizational facilitators. Journal of Small Business Management, 53(4), pp.1241-1263.

Carbonara, N. and Pellegrino, R. (2017) How do supply chain risk management flexibility-driven strategies perform in mitigating supply disruption risks?. International Journal of Integrated Supply Management, 11(4), pp.354-379.

Chowhan, P. (2013) Supply chain planning framework for industrial gas producer. Journal of Management, 67(9), pp.20-31.

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