In this Issue

Finding Unexpected Collaborators

Tools: Within 3.com, a social network for scientific practitioners
Tactic: Saverino Gentile, a visiting fellow in the neurobiology laboratory at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, had been using within3.com, a social network for doctors, to discuss medical journal articles. While mulling over a paper on nicotinic receptors, he connected with two researchers he’d never worked with before — though they were all in the same building. “Without the social network, even though we were a few meters apart, we would have never known we were all working on this,” Gentile says. Working together, Gentile and his newfound colleagues, Elaine Gay and Jerrel Yakel, discovered a possible mechanism that can explain why nicotine receptors work the wrong way when associated with congenital myasthenia gravis, a hereditary disease that causes severe muscle fatigue. Since gathering further data on the breakthrough, the group has been selected to deliver a paper on the subject at a Society for Neuroscience convention in November.

Building a Global Business From Scratch

Tools: LinkedIn, Facebook, Flickr

Tactic: When Nick Kellet got in touch with a former co-worker through LinkedIn, he was interested to hear that she was teaching Chinese to the inventors of the board game Cranium to help them work with their factory in China. Kellet had recently left his job to publish a board game of his own, called GiftTRAP. His friend arranged an introduction to the factory owners in Shanghai, and soon Kellet had a manufacturer for his game. Next he turned to photo-sharing site Flickr and found images from more than 500 different photographers that he could legally use for his game. Once GiftTRAP had been produced, Kellet used social networks to find buyers at Wal-Mart and Toys “R” Us. “It’s not easy to get into those places,” he says. “You get stonewalled at reception.” Then he plugged into BoardGameGeek to connect with influential players in the tabletop-gaming community and get his product into the hands of reviewers. The long hours online paid off. Games Magazine declared GiftTRAP the best party game of 2008; it has been translated into eight languages and is now in its third print run. Kellet isn’t done with social networking, either — he’s just developed a Facebook application that lets people play his game online.

Finding Talent in the Trenches

Tools: Blogs, Twitter
Tactic: LaunchSquad, a San Francisco PR firm working with freshly minted startups, has used social media to find potential job candidates who are skilled social networkers. “If we were going to attract the candidates with the skill sets we wanted, they had to be active within social media before they even came on,” says partner and co-founder Jason Throckmorton. “We began looking for people who were commenting on our client companies or things related to public relations.” Combing through Twitter, they found then-University of Oregon senior Megan Soto, who had tweeted about the virtual community Vivaty, a LaunchSquad client. A quick Google search turned up Soto’s blog, and the folks at LaunchSquad liked what they saw. The firm contacted Soto, interviewed her, and ultimately offered her a position, which Soto happily accepted. “She never would have found us unless we found her,” Throckmorton says.

Viral Marketing on the Cheap

Tools: Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter

Tactic: When Jennifer Wakefield of the Metro Orlando Economic Development Commission began social networking, she knew that film and media would be her target. “We have green nearly 365 days out of the year here in Orlando,” she says, which makes the city ideal for film shoots. She created profiles for metro Orlando on both MySpace and Facebook, sites popular with film and entertainment professionals. Meanwhile, the commission’s Suzy Spang Allen, VP of film and digital media development, uses Twitter to connect with others at industry events like South by Southwest, Sundance, and the Tribeca Film Festival. Wakefield reports that more eyes are already on Orlando: The number of producers scouting the Florida metropolis is up by 70 percent over last year.

View the Article for responses from readers and more ideas on how to use social networking sites to boost your business. http://www.bnet.com/2403-13070_23-219914.html

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Success in the manufacturing industry requires producing the right products, in the right quantities, at the right time, with good quality, and at a price the customer is willing to pay. The flexibility to respond to compliance standards and the ever-changing needs of customers, such as providing real-time visibility into global operations, is also imperative for success. Meeting these demands requires the ability to make quick decisions based on accurate data.

Microsoft Dynamics ERP and CRM solutions work like and with familiar Microsoft software. They automate and improve financial, customer relationship, and supply-chain management.

Integrate collaboration and communication

Deliver a single, real-time view of data from multiple facilities and departments
Synchronize communication between engineering, manufacturing, and subcontractors
Optimize planning to minimize inventory while meeting customer requirements
Share information within your systems through the Web

Efficiently manage projects

Provide an accurate overview of project status
Track activities and resources at many levels of detail
Leverage knowledge and content from existing or prior projects

Deliver superior customer service

Gain a comprehensive view of customer information
Eliminate isolated silos of information
Create customer self-service opportunities
Coordinate multichannel communications with customers
Collaborate with customers on new product designs

Estimate and quote accurately

Provide accurate quotations based on a real-time view into operations
Align customer requirements with your capabilities
Record customer requirements accurately

Provide flexible production planning

Use data from the entire supply chain to respond effectively to changes and problems
Access data through familiar desktop tools
Support various manufacturing modes, such as engineer-to-order, make-to-order, make-to-stock, and mixed/hybrid

Lean manufacturing

Maintaining efficient operations in today's manufacturing environment isn’t easy, but putting into practice the principles of lean manufacturing can further hone your organization’s competitive edge. Typical manufacturing plants have multiple vendors, multiple interfaces, complex information flows, and asynchronous processing, all of which can lead to limited visibility into orders, materials, and production. To achieve peak performance, manufacturers must systematically identify and eliminate plant floor inefficiencies.

This lean manufacturing strategy requires a four-step cycle of continuous improvement:

Value-stream-mapping documents each step in the process, its inputs and outputs, across the entire supply chain.
Analysis and modeling identify tasks that could be simplified or cut altogether.
Implementation and continuous improvement actualize change on the plant floor.
Management and reporting evaluates the results and begins the cycle again.

Learn more about lean manufacturing functionality in Microsoft Dynamics ERP.

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Four Ways Social Networking Can Build Business