Australian manufacturing companies boost productivity and competitive advantage with enterprise social software

2013-03-25

While a bit light on details, I'm not going to complain about this positive story in the ITPro section of the Fairfax newspapers about two packaging manufacturing companies using enterprise social software to help their bottom-line.

Pact Group, with staff spread across 70 sites in Australia, New Zealand and Asia,

is currently using Salesforce Chatter with 600 of its 3500 employees. They are expecting to expand this to a total of 1,000 people by the end of June.

Pact Group say that Chatter has "helped improve productivity by allowing employees to more quickly share large files, pose questions to help solve problems quickly and access knowledge from all its sites."

Amcor say:

"Our aim is to ultimately enhance the way we support our customers and drive competitive advantage".

Amcor is apparently trailing an unnamed product for its global workforce, who are spread across 42 countries.

I've referenced an Australian productivity statistic many times before that points to the gap created by local companies who are failing to implement progressive management practices, so I'm particularly encouraged to see key phrases like 'productivity' and 'competitive advantage' being mentioned. These businesses aren't deploying Chatter and similar tools for fun - this is about finding new ways to improve the bottom line.

BTW If you are interested in manufacturing case studies, also have a look at this Socialtext example featuring a US-based Industrial Mold & Machine.