Cross-Functional Social Media Across Supply Chain Organizations - Why Bother?

Cross-Functional Social Media the Answer?

My Question:  Can Social Media really be truly engaged cross-functionally within a company and unify Sales, Marketing, Product and Support teams?  I want to know...  

After Gartner's Supply Chain Executive Summit earlier in June, I'm left considering my own social media strategy.  There was a sharp contrast on the 'presence' of social media used at the event, used within supply chains, covered by Gartner, and used by B2B software providers in the ERP/SCM space.  Some thoughts and observations from Gartner's event...

1. Social Media as a means of supply chain collaboration with (at very least) customers, if not suppliers and global networks was entirely negligible, if not notably forced into a few places.  As tweeted by the astute observation of @gcourtin, hopeful discussion on social media became a noticeable and big disappointment.  Gartner (AMR) is the 'demand-driven' supply network (DDSN) pioneers and we now operate in a socially-connected consumer world.  The year of social media as a supply chain intelligence vehicle (or buzz, or trend, at least) would have to wait.
2. Social Media among application providers was also 'cloudy' at best.  Leading ERP and SCM technology providers evangelized (or enabled vis-a-vis seemingly scripted customer testimonial) the social media application integration in their latest application capabilities.  However, dialog and closer inspection showed disconnect between social media on the product side versus the company's own use of it as a collaboration tool among the very same Sales, Product, Marketing, and Support teams or extending it to the Customers they say should embrace it.  
3. Social Media's saving grace came from the industry practitioner side and perhaps an unlikely candidate in Vivek Kamath of defense leader Raytheon.  Kamath praised the social media opportunity used at Raytheon to collaborate and educate tens of thousands of their global employees in his presentation "Creating Opportunities from Challenges: Attracting, Developing and Retaining Top Talent".  In a world of talent churn, he noted how those that capture, share, and retain knowledge - as availed by social media - can outperform financial metrics of peers by a factor of 4x.

Gartner's audience pulled through. Excellent tweets came from supply chain evangelists and mostly from software providers.  Many were alums of best-of-breed SCM pioneers i2 Technologies, Manugistics, and JDA.  These now comprise one @JDASoftware powerhouse or have moved on to inject supply chain talent into companies like IHS, Kinaxis, or Progress Software.  

It's clear Social Media is in its infancy among 'mature' supply chain practitioners, technology providers, and analysts.  What's also clear is that its reach, technical nuances, and collaboration power are vastly misunderstood and under-utilized. 

As I look to improve my own social media methods, I have questions I seek answers to:

• Use social media at your company?  Who owns, evangelizes or dominates its use?
• Can it truly get sales, marketing, product teams, etc. all on the same page?
• How does your company do it?  Where did you start?  What experience can you share?
• What big benefits or risks have you seen? 

What's just one piece of advice you could give?  Get cross-functional or abandon ship?  What do you think?  Tell me...Rory

P.S.  These views are all my own personal views, and certainly not my employer's.

http://xeesm.com/RoryKing
@RoryAKing
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/rory-king/0/992/6b4