Logistics Operations and Social Media?

How can I harness the information my company gathers through social media for the benefit of our logistics operations?

There’s a lesson to be learned from companies that do in-home service visits for the installation or repair of consumer products. Social media comments are brutal when technicians don't show up as planned or don't have the right tools or parts to complete their job. There’s a whole lot of logistics going on to make this process efficient and effective. They need to arrange for the right parts and right tools and right technicians to be at the right locations at the right times with the right scheduling tools...and on and on.

James A. Tompkins, Ph.D., CEO,
Tompkins International,
supply chain consultants

This is a broad question, mainly because one can gather a very large variety of information from social media. One thing that always sticks out to me is the fact that social media never stops – it’s “on” 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The consistent flow of information can benefit anyone looking for something on a particular subject.

Social media increases visibility. For instance, it can help you predict what items will be popular during the holiday season and break that information down by region or country.  

Social media can be used as a way to contact individuals globally. If you need to contact someone in a specific position in your China warehouse, you could do that through LinkedIn. Some social media platforms have chat features which can allow someone to communicate with service providers and customers as directly as possible and thus greatly accelerate business processes.

Social media can also be used as an internal knowledge center that can store information about logistics tasks and processes, either yours or your competitors.

The reality is that social media changes every day - new tools and platforms are introduced to us all the time. There is no accurate way to predict what companies will be able to do with social media next week.  But, for sure the potential is huge, certainly to include potential for logistics.