Streamline Supply Chain Using Social Media

Social Media has been widely used in general business, marketing and even international business. But the application in supply chain management context seems to be lagging behind. As a matter of fact, social media can be utilized to improve various aspects of the operations in the supply chain and business results can be achieved rapidly.

This article gathers information from the paper called "The Use of Social Media in the Supply Chain: Survey and Extensions" by Daniel E. O'Leary (2011) from University of Southern California - Marshall School of Business. This paper shows the application of social media in a supply chain context from a theoretical perspective as well as a practical perspective which also includes examples from companies in various segments of the supply chain. Then, I pick the most relevant examples and convert them into a clear and concise infographic. The purpose of this infographic is to illustrate 10 actions across 4 categories, namely,

- Supply chain event management
- Customer Service and customer relationship management
- Supply chain collaboration and procurement
- Information technology

Therefore, supply chain management professionals should be able to implement these ideas immediately and gain quick win business results.



Discussion
Please note that the research paper also mentioned some other aspects of social media, but it is still difficult to apply some strategies in the real world business settings. Also, there might be some other ways to utilize social media in a supply chain project through the use of enterprise-level social media analytics. However, this option seems to be very costly so I hope this infographic serves the purpose very well in providing you with something actionable.

In case you find some other ways to utilize social media, please don't hesitate to drop me a line.

Reference
- O'leary, D. E. (2011). The use of social media in the supply chain: survey and extensions. Intelligent Systems in Accounting, Finance and Management, 18(2-3), 121-144.

Last review and update: September 16, 2019
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All contents are written by Ben Benjabutr unless marked as [Guest Commentary]

About the Author and Editor:
Ben Benjabutr is the author and editor of SupplyChainOpz. He holds an M.Sc. in Logistics Management with 10+ years of experience in supply chain management. You can connect with Ben via Twitter, and Quora or drop him a line via e-mail.