Social Sales and Operations Planning

In a post on his blog, Pretzel Logic, Sameer Patel put forward an argument Why Exception Handling Should be the Rule . His discussion of exceptions in the post aligns nicely with my recent blog post, The Happy Path.

Patel's model of the three Modes of Work - Process, Project and Exceptions provides a convenient way to analyze enterprise activities.

Whereas The Happy Path discussed Exceptions, in this post I will describe an example from the Process mode that illustrates the opportunities for enterprise collaboration through the integration of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and social business collaboration (SBC) technology.
Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP) is one of the central ERP business processes.  In short, the process integrates the inputs from enterprise organizations and aims to set an agreed rate of production that satisfies the demand (sales) plan and takes into consideration inventory plans.  Although the process is typically managed by an individual, it is inherently collaborative in nature. The input and insights from sales, marketing, customer service, product management, operations, engineering and finance are combined to establish the sales and operations plans.

The Sales & Operations Planning Cycle

Imagine the potential to improve the quality of the planning process outcomes by expanding its reach to include inputs directly from the folks on the front lines of the enterprise. For example, customer service representatives can provide real-time intelligence on product use and acceptance before it shows up in the sales history. Sales representatives may have information about competitors and the steps they are taking to counter your moves in the marketplace.

I hope you agree that there are valuable insights from across the enterprise that through the integration of SBC technologies can be leveraged in ERP processes such as sales and operations planning.

Social Manufacturing

I read with great interest the recent special report in The Economist, The future of manufacturing - A third industrial revolution. In particular, as an enterprise collaboration evangelist my interest was piqued by the mention of "social manufacturing".

Several emerging technologies, including additive manufacturing (3D printing) and social business collaboration (SBC) are being combined with older technologies such as Computer-Aided Design (CAD) and Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CAM) to dramatically lower the barriers to entry and enable innovations in products, services and business models that will disrupt the broader manufacturing industry.

Hacking is no longer solely the domain of software enthusiasts. The open source movement has expanded from software to product design. As the price of 3D printers has declined the prospects for artisans producing low volume, highly customized solutions have increased. While 3D printing adds the WOW factor, it is SBC enabled collaboration that will really drive the revolution. And I think that we will see the balance of market power shift from larger to smaller players.

Imagine for a moment your local hardware store or plumber, equipped with 3D printers, printing a spare part on-demand, essentially never running out of stock. It is the access to open source designs through a networked community of interest that really makes this scenario work. Many of theses folks will be self-taught or on a second career. They will need the help of like minded enthusiasts to iron out the inevitable bugs and maintain a complex integrated tool set. I have every confidence that a growing number will be successful and that we will see evidence of the change sooner than we think.

It has been said that the grass roots organizing skills of social movements in the sixties, such as the civil rights and anti-war movements, were critical to the success of women's, environmentalism and human rights movements that followed. More recently, social scientists are rethinking their theories of social movements to incorporate the impact of the Internet and to understand the forces that are enabling the emergence of thousands of transnational non-governmental organizations (NGO's).

I believe that we are seeing a parallel to the evolution of social movements in the emergence of social manufacturing as a viable form of enterprise. The collaboration tools available to individuals outside of large enterprises, such as LinkedIn, Facebook or the range of tools from Google, are in many ways superior to the tools available to those inside large enterprises. The advantage that large enterprises have with respect to the access to critical resources are rapidly being overcome.

I hope to play an important role in the third industrial revolution. What are your plans?

DARPA does Social Product Development

I believe that the application of social business collaboration (SBC) tools and practices will revolutionize enterprise business processes.  So I read with great interest the report Pentagon Pushes Crowdsourced Manufacturing in the New York Times on April 5, 2012 which describes a significant initiative to apply SBC to the Product Development process – from idea to manufacturing.

In the piece they quote LTC Nathan Wiedenman, a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) program manager:

“… The goal, he said, is to “democratize the design process.”

They go on to quote Joseph Salvo, manager of the business integration technologies lab at G.E. Research:

“This is about changing the paradigm so you can rapidly design and manufacture complex systems of all kinds,”

In the graphic that accompanied the report we can see the prominent role played by the “crowdsourcing platform” and collaboration technologies, such as wikis and forums, in their strategy.

It is clear to me that DARPA is embracing Social Product Development as means to achieve their goal “to cut the design-to-production cycle to two to four years”. As a taxpayer and SBC advocate I plan to watch this program closely.