Social Computing Software for the Consumer Goods and Retail Industries
Common Challenges in the Consumer Goods and Retail Industries
The Consumer Goods and Retail industries are experiencing a variety of challenges that include economic pressures, shifts in demographics and emerging markets, “green” sustainability requirements, growing global supply chain and operations, and constantly changing and evolving customer preferences. To try to gain market share, companies within these industries are using collaboration and enterprise social computing software to stay agile, drive innovation, communicate with partners, and optimize their operations.
Changing Customer Preferences and Attitudes
Organizations need to be able to react faster to changing customer preferences, consumer spending behavior, on-shelf availability, market conditions, and material supply.
Increased Need for Innovation
Always-connected consumers expect seamless and personalized experiences from the brands they and trust. So as competition continues, in stores and online, the demand for Consumer Goods and Retail companies to innovate is increasing rapidly.
Sustainability and Regulations
Companies are increasingly being required to give special attention to compliance and safety issues and the increased demand for “green” products and facilities.
Widely Distributed Workforces and Partners
As global companies expand and merge, it is difficult to facilitate communication and collaboration among employees and partners that span different geographic locations and time zones.
Demographic and Operational Shifts
Consumer Goods and Retail organizations need to achieve new and unprecedented levels of supply chain collaboration and operational excellence as well as the need to be flexible to adapt to emerging markets.
The Benefits of Social Computing
NewsGator’s social business software solutions help you overcome these business challenges by providing an integrated, behind-the-firewall, social computing platform that supports business collaboration, facilitates communication and innovation, and improves worker knowledge. These solutions have helped our Consumer Goods and Retail customers to realize the following business benefits:
- Better innovation
- Improved productivity
- Higher revenues
- Improved communication
- Better customer service/satisfaction
- Enhanced recruiting and retention
- Increased worker knowledge
- Lower IT investment and support costs
Sample Social Computing Use Cases for Consumer Goods and Retail Companies
A wide range of solutions are possible with NewsGator’s enterprise social computing and collaboration products. A few examples of the use cases we have implemented for the Consumer Goods and Retail industries include:
Community Builder
Using Social Sites, employees can form online communities of practice to share information and documents, engage in rich discussions, and discover subject matter experts (for example, to discuss a new product launch, an alternative supply chain process, or a new way to take advantage of “green” technology).
Employee Engagement & Collaboration
With Social Sites, employees can communicate and collaborate with consumers, suppliers, and partners in real time – resulting in better knowledge about customer preferences, improved enterprise collaboration, and increased product innovation.
Expert Locator
With Social Sites Profile pages and implicit behavior data collection, employees can easily locate colleagues that may be working on similar product launches, research projects, supplier inquiries, etc.
Industry Tracker
With Social Sites News Stream, management can subscribe employees to relevant news and developments about specific products, consumer trends, competitors, partners, market data, and regulatory details. This aggregated and timely information can be delivered to any device/location the employee selects, including SharePoint, mobile, web, and desktop.