Social Technology For Manufacturing and Supply Chain

In the today’s world the term social is used to describe the simplest task or component and often is more a marketing term than anything else. For all the social interactions written about social and sharing has mostly referred to a B2C business model. The social aspect works well for this scenario. What has been forgotten and overlooked is the lack of communication and social aspect as it pertains to the B2B model. If your business sells to other businesses a B2B model, you should also be able to reap the benefits of social as well.

As can be seen, it is not that easy for B2B entities to engage, interest, nurture and close the sales cycle using social technology. A few main reasons for this are the length of the sales cycle (quite often longer than the B2C model), the complexity and usually the dollar amount. The term social has become very broad in meaning and now incorporates many other aspects that were often not associated to social. Within a B2B scenario social has expanded to incorporate collaboration, business monitoring and listening, email automation, content and document management, the use of social networking sites as a knowledgebase and other various tools such as social CRM (SCRM) as it has become known.

By engaging many social vendors through our analyst briefings there are very few tools that address the social needs for B2B organizations. How can B2B organizations take advantage of the social hype and capitalize on it by closing more business ? Within a B2B context social is rapidly evolving and incorporating many complementary tasks, systems and operations. Recently there have been many new vendors pop up that are starting to understand the deficiencies left by B2C social and are applying it to B2B customers. An example of vendors closing the gap in social space is making things easier is for service-based businesses, many vendors are starting to combine social CRM to project management and billing. In this case, smaller service businesses can run their entire operations on this one application. The project management functionalities are wide and deep including Gannt charts, task dependencies and in some cases customer portals for customers and contractors to login.

Applying social to the manufacturing and supply chain areas is rapidly evolving by use of newer technologies to do the same old thing as B2B organizations have previously interacted. Social supply chain and manufacturing as it is now called is just a marketing term within this space. B2B organizations called it collaboration and had set up trading partners, networks, systems to effectively collaborate. Passing information for orders was done through fax, and then evolved to EDI then to FTP transfers and other various semi-automated tasks. Depending on the industry, such as automotive, retail and other manufacturing had found somewhat capable methods of transferring and exchanging data through various means.

In areas of manufacturing where collaboration is of the utmost importance such as aerospace and defense collaboration of parts and specifications could mean the difference between life and death for tolerances, inadequate materials or workmanship that has to be co-ordinated to the minutest detail. Outside of the manufacturing process lies the supply chain where raw materials exist and inventory resides. Communication between suppliers for procurement is vital as in the case of JIT inventory within the manufacturing process. Inventory within the supply chain where raw materials are shipped to other organizations for further processing – here procurement is the key aspect of collaboration. In the case of distribution where a supplier places an order or several hundred orders involving possibly thousands of SKUS the collaboration has to be correct or it can break the supply chain. Demand planning will be affected thereby throwing off replenishment planning and resulting in stock shortages at store level. So you can see that organizations have been doing the social thing for many years previously and getting it right. Everything throughout the supply chain including transportation, customs to delivery is dependent on data exchange. Established trading partner networks have been established such as Ariba, Coupa and others that further facilitate collaboration and trading.

To its credit social technology has increased the amount of collaboration between suppliers and partners and has even enhanced the process. Social as it refers to supply chain and manufacturing means collaboration. Sharing of information and systems that facilitate a do it yourself model have significantly increased bidirectional data flow and has streamlined many processes and workflows.

New customer portals are being used to update specifications, design and delivery dates and the like. Knowledgebases are being created in many industries to identify experts, solicit feedback, have questions answered, monitoring and listening about products and company buzz, to refine and fix errors quickly within production, content and document management are all areas where social technology has enhanced the supply chain and manufacturing processes. Since social has played an important part in streamlining company operations it is upto software vendors now to capitalize on this trend and find a way to use social technology for B2B success. As social permeates through the industrial sector software vendors will incorporate more complementary functionality and adoption should increase.

As adoption spreads with social technology in manufacturing and supply chain I am sure innovative ways will be created to capture the advantages of crowdsourcing that may be applied to the B2B model. Mostly every successful social media story has related to a B2C company, we should try to find ways to adapt the B2C model of social media to the B2B aspect and capitalize on the benefits. If there are success stories about B2B social technology uses we would be glad to discuss them with you.

About Eval-Source
http://www.eval-source.com
Eval‐Source is a consulting firm that provides all enterprise software selection and strategic technology consulting services for organizations to achieve success in their IT initiatives. Our consulting practices encompass cloud and on-premise software evaluation services, ERP, Supply Chain, and technology strategy consulting. Our Tru‐Eval selection system allows organizations to avoid IT failure, receive greater ROI and provide accurate decision support for enterprise software. Eval‐Source is an industry leader in the analysis of software technology and our thought leadership has placed us in the elite of consulting/analyst firms. What sets us apart is our unbiased best in class consulting services that provide our clients with value, direction and success in selection, planning and optimization of their technology systems. Eval‐Source provides the professional services that put your needs first and allows you to achieve success in your IT initiatives. We are the source for “getting it right” in IT procurement.