Companies are constantly looking to embrace new ways to improve operational efficiencies, and they can do so by rolling out solutions that facilitate spontaneous associations among employees, customers and partners, creating cross functional programs within an enterprise to share knowledge and drive better business results. To maintain a competitive edge and address dynamic changes in today’s business environment, companies need open collaboration so they develop new processes that bring significant improvements in operational efficiencies.

TEVA Pharmaceutical – one of the largest generic pharmaceutical companies in the world – that develops, produces and markets generic and proprietary branded pharmaceuticals and active pharmaceutical ingredients leverages spontaneous associations through open collaboration to quickly identify, report and resolve manufacturing problems, ensuring the right people are automati­cally alerted and engaged to work together as issues arise.

In the article “Talking Collaborative Supply Chains at Enterprise 2.0 Conference,” Sameer Patel, partner at Sovos Group, described how open collaboration based on Enterprise 2.0 technology can create new supply chain efficiencies. Sameer provides insightful perspectives and I quote him verbatim:

“Supply Chain efficiency is a big big deal. More over, this area of the enterprise technology stack and associated strategy has seen little to no innovation for well over a decade…

… Back in the summer of 2009 I wrote about taming the supply chain beast with Enterprise 2.0 approaches and technology. On the value of connecting suppliers to not just each other and to the procurement department, but to other organizational facets generally quarantined from suppliers, I wrote:

First, no one knows the true power, limitations and opportunities for each component of a product better than the very folks who build them. Second, component manufacturing is largely a commodity business.  As a supplier, I need to differentiate myself from competitors who are waiting for me to falter or cut me on price. I need to be a strategic partner to be somewhat indispensible. Social Software can open up the lines of interaction beyond R&D, Procurement and Product Development, allowing suppliers to learn, first hand, any pain felt by the end customer. Or help marketing really understand the deep competencies of each component of the end product. Or provide new insight to R&D on early technology innovation at the component level. And on and on.

That’s purpose built collaboration (a.k.a business case) with dead clear incentives for suppliers to participate (a.k.a adoption) and play a role in the success of an end product in the market place.

On Wednesday, June 22 at 9 a.m. ET, I’ll share the stage with Tony Martins, VP of Supply Chain at TEVA Pharmaceutical at the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston (Twitter: @e2conf and #e2conf) . We will deliver a keynote address discussing the critical business value of open collaboration to improve operational efficiencies.