Questions on Total Addressable Market - Paper Example

Question one: Lost sales due to poor customer service

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Customers are significant stakeholders in the business (Kumar & Reinartz, 2012). Every loss that the business incurs due to poor customer service can be prevented. No matter how little the loss might be, the business must feel its effects. Therefore, TAM can prevent incurring the losses due to poor customer service by outside contract sales staff by developing new innovative ways or strategies to enhance and maintain customer-business relationships. The business needs to understand the needs of customers and try to meet those needs. TAM can improve the customer service by increasing rapid access to timely and accurate information to customers. As stated in the case study, customers complain that they have not seen sales representative despite for even a month (Doyle & Bell, 2009, p. 168). Therefore, providing customers with the right information at the right time can help TAM enhance customers relationship with the business.

Question two: Restoring the attractiveness and power of TAM

Customers are the core element of the business operation; the business cannot exist without the customers. What most business institutions do wrong is shifting priority of focus from customers to competitors. Competitors can always exist without one particular business; however, a business cannot exist without customers. Therefore, TAM can restore its attractiveness and power in the market by focusing on the customers rather than competitors (Muller, 2012). The case study shows that TAM has a problem with adopting the right pricing for the products. The company fears that if it increases the price, other competitors that deal with low-quality products can overtake them in the market. This is a wrong notion that TAM needs to come out of if it desires to restore its competitiveness. Therefore, TAM needs to shift its focus from the competitors to customers who determine the success of the business. The business should try to earn customers trust by ensuring that it produces quality products.

Question three: How to minimize stock outages

Tea is one of the commodities that have a long shelf life; therefore, TAM can minimize its stock outages by increasing its biannual orders from the supplier in London. Insurance is another way to ensure that the supply chain risks are prevented. The company needs to find other means or ways to obtain sufficient product such that customers do not become inconvenienced with the delays from a single supplier (Muller, 2012). Having more than one supplier can help reduce this challenge; not all suppliers can have the same delay problem at the same time. Therefore, when there are two or more suppliers the product will always be on the shelf where customers can find it easily. The case study shows that the company has some other options such as Asian region that can serve as another supplier in case delays from the EML in London.

Question four: How to reduce collection time from 54 days to less than 40 days

Every business has its terms of payment and it is the responsibility of the business to ensure that its customers understand and adhere to the credit payment policies. The policies are drafted by the business for the customers and not vice versa. Therefore, the company has a responsibility to ensure that customers comply with the credit policies without fear of losing them. The company can reiterate its credit policies without favoring customers; however, a proper way to this can achieve by sending a reminder to the customers few days before the deadline. TAM can also reduce the collection time by convincing customers that timely payment would consequently contribute to improved quality customer service.

Question five: Decisions to make regarding experimentation with new varieties

Experimentation on a new variety of products in the market needs sufficient information on the products performance (Muller, 2012). TAM needs to understand the seasons of operations; when the product is selling more and when it is selling low. These records should help the business decide on when to introduce a new variety of the product in the market. Low season is always the wrong time to introduce a new variety of product in the market as it is most likely to record poor performance. TAM needs to maintain its proven product during the low season and ensure that the new variety is introduced during the high season; however, this must be accompanied by two main factors, insurance, and availability. The inventory needs to be insured and also be readily available to customers whenever they need it.

Question six: Financial advantages and process efficiency

TAM has not fully explored other financial advantages and process efficiency such as enhancing investment in the market. As stated in the case study, failure by TAM to invest in marketing is one of the reasons that have led to its failure in the previous operations. TAMs competitors are able to outrun it because of their marketing strategies. Increasing the process efficiency can be achieved through minimization of the operational inefficiency between the production chief and sales department. Again, TAM needs to focus on improving communication flows between the business, suppliers, and customers. Proper communication will improve suppliers partnership with the business; which is an advantage to TAM.

References

Doyle, B., & Bell, A. H. (2009). Reading the Tea Leaves at Tea and More: Resolving Complex Supply Chain Issues.Kumar, V., & Reinartz, W. (2012). Customer relationship management: Concept, strategy, and tools. Springer Science & Business Media.Muller, M. (2012). Design-driven innovation for sustainability: a new method for developing a sustainable value proposition. International Journal of Innovation Science, 4(1), 11-24.