Customer relationship management (CRM) by using social media: Facebook

Customer relationship management (CRM) now is very widely-implemented by all companies around the world, this strategy used for managing the interactions between companies and it costumer, client and sales prospect. This strategy involves using technology to organize, automate, and synchronize business processes—principally sales activities, but also those for marketing, customer service, and technical support. And the overall goals are to find, attract, and win new clients, nurture and retain those the company already has, entice former clients back into the fold, and reduce the costs of marketing and client service.
There are many methods to connect and attract with the costumer, one of them is social media. Social media sites like Twitter, and Facebook are amplifying the voice of people in the marketplace and are having profound and far-reaching effects on the ways in which people buy. Now people can know all about company only from social media. When the want to make decision to buy, they don’t need to contacting the company. And also people use the social media to share with other about product of company and give recommendation for other, and the social media used by company to accept the complaint from the costumer, solve the problem from costumer about the product, and give the best product service for the costumer by using social media.
By using social media, the company can keep in touch with their costumer, as we know that almost all people now use social media intently. This can be a way to make intimacy better between company and the costumer. This is a step to get competitive advantages from the other competitors.
Some analysts take the view that business-to-business marketers should proceed cautiously when weaving social media into their business processes. These observers recommend careful market research to determine if and where the phenomenon can provide measurable benefits for client interactions, sales and support.
There are many examples that use the social media as a part to keep connect and attract with their costumers, one of them is ACER Indonesia. Acer use social media to promote their new product, gives any suggestions for the costumers, and promotes new news about event that can be followed by all user of Acer notebook. Not only that Acer also uses social media to answer the question from user and gives them problem solving.

BULLWHIP EFFECT IN THE COMPANY

Bullwhip effect is a term that used in inventory. This term define how the fluctuation of demand in a supply chain. Supply chain is a network that used by organizations or business for procuring raw materials, transforming those materials into intermediate and the last into finished products and distributing the finished products to costumer. Back to bullwhip effect, concept of bullwhip effect is a situation that occurs in supply chain which the demands of costumer are change, either increase or decrease, this change causes distorted demand from each stage of supply chain. This distortion generates effects for all stage of supply chain that is the inaccuracy in demand.
The company effort to avoid bullwhip effect, as what done by PT PERTAMINA this company has good example in avoiding bullwhip effect, they effort to have a good connection from upstream to downstream, so that they can manage availability and fulfill the need of fuel at all district in Indonesia. If the company cannot manage good connection, this can make asymmetry information among company, upstream and downstream. Then the needs to fuel from all kinds of activities cannot be fulfilled and the scarcity of fuel will be occurred. The fuel is a crucial thing in economic activities, if PT PERTAMINA cannot manage well, the economic activities will be died.
This is an urgency to develop a good connection among upstream and downstream to avoid bullwhip effect.