Today is the third article focused on our view of the potential impact that social networking will have in reshaping Supply Management (or B2B or P2P relationships).

The first – Business or Pleasure: How Social Networking Will Reshape Supply Management?

The second – 750 Million People Can’t Be Wrong

Bridging the Social Media Gap

The underlying capabilities and drivers behind the most successful of these social networks can and should have the same impact in business communication and performance. As such, there is a remarkable opportunity for businesses to begin to attack the current social media gap and incorporate many of the key social media capabilities into their business tools, technologies, and networks. The following case study is an example of what we believe is one of the most compelling opportunities to do just that across the Supply Management and the P2P value chain (the report has other case studies)

Internal Knowledge Management (via Wikis)

Social Media: A Wiki is a website that is developed in a collaborative fashion with content contributions from different community members. According to itself, Wikipedia is a free web-based collaborative multilingual encyclopedia project that has 19 million articles in 282 different languages written collaboratively by volunteer contributors from around the world.

Key Attributes: A wiki captures and organizes information on a platform that is both easy to read and easy to search. It is also easy for users to create articles and make quick contributions. The editing process is also quick and easy and provides an audit trail to understand what changes to content were made when, and by whom.

Value in a B2B Context: Lew Platt, the former CEO of Hewlett Packard once said that “If only HP knew what it knows, it would make three times more profit tomorrow.” Platt understood that if his company could truly harness the collective intelligence that resided within his global organization, the value that could be unlocked would be exponential. As business operations become more information and knowledge-driven and less activity based, the legacy knowledge management practices that view “knowledge” as a static object that requires a deliberate process to manage becomes less and less relevant each day. In reality, things change, priorities shift, and new information becomes available, making “knowledge” a moving target. A major problem for most enterprises is that its most critical knowledge resides in far-flung places across it – on laptops, in notebooks, in email folders, or in the minds of employees. An even larger problem for many enterprises is that they are probably unaware of who actually possesses the best information and who the real experts are on a given topic. Enterprises need platforms that can easily capture and share the collective knowledge of their workforces and encourage and reward those who contribute

B2B Use Case #1: Requirements Gathering: The aggregation of category spend is a classic sourcing strategy that can yield significant savings by driving volume discounts across fewer suppliers. A major challenge in this process is gaining consensus around final requirements from different stakeholders. Leveraging a wiki to develop, negotiate, and finalize requirements would put control of the process in the hands of the budget holders, enable a democratic back and forth collaboration, and provide visibility to all throughout the process.

B2B Use Case #2: Best Practices in Category Management: The days of thirty-year tenures are behind us. In fact, twenty-five percent of all workers have been with their current employer for less than one year. This means that roughly 25% of an enterprise’s employees (and knowledge) leave every year. Organizations cannot be crippled by the employment trends of the day and must be able to capture and retain best practices. Utilizing a wiki to develop the strategies that define how the different spend categories should be managed to the benefit of the enterprise can ensure that the collective wisdom in the sourcing, procuring, and usage of different categories is centrally captured and as markets and needs shift are adapted as needed.

The articles in this series are based upon the report, How Social Networking Will Reshape the P2P Value Chain which can be downloaded by clicking the report name (registration required). The report was underwritten by Basware.

Tagged in: Adoption, Category Management, Networks, Predictions, Social Media, Sourcing, Technology