How Social is your Extended Supply Chain?

Today’s supply chain runs at the speed of now and generates massive amounts of data and events that need to be processed, routed, and shared near real-time across all stakeholders within your company, partners, and customers. In this day and age Supply chain participants are always online, always connected and using mobile devices to stay connected while they are away from their laptops.

Within a social supply chain, all members are enabled to use social media to communicate critical supply chain information directly and efficiently in real time.

Are you ready for the Social Supply Chain?

Take this quick self-assessment to score the social capability of your supply chain. Give yourself 1 point for every question that you can answer with a “yes”.

1. Does your company have a messaging system like Skype to allow you to see online status and send direct messages to other employees in your supply chain?
2. If you have a messaging system can you use it to communicate with your extended partners and customers?
3. Does your company provide a twitter or yammer tool to be able to broadcast information across channels or allow supply chain participants to subscribe to key information feeds?
4. Does your ERP system or supply chain application provide automated active alerts based on supply chain events? A good example would be the ability for a customer to subscribe to alerts via text or email for delayed shipments or delivery confirmations.
5. Does your supply chain analytics or ERP application support collaboration by incorporating social features to like, share, or comment on information?

How did you score on your self-assessment?

0 -- 1 Your supply chain is about as socially awkward as that odd uncle who still owns a flip phone and only signs on to Facebook to play Farmville.

2 – 3 Your supply chain is average and on par with other companies. You have taken advantage of some mainstream social features and your company is in a great position to expand your use of social tools in your supply chain to increase efficiency, improve communication, and use the social supply chain to your strategic advantage.

4 – 5 Congratulations you are a strong adopter of the social supply chain and you have most likely implemented more advanced social features that we will cover in a future blog on this topic.

Next steps, keep investing in your social supply chain capability and show your support for the social supply chain by using the social media buttons on this blog to re-tweet or share this blog and your social supply chain score.