Eleven years have passed since I first wrote about supply chain management software in the pages of Managing Automation. In the spring of 1998, the notion of building and managing an extended supply chain using enterprise software was just becoming known to a newly globalizing world.

My take on the problems of using software to manage an extended supply chain turned out to be a little more prescient than I had expected, especially because the opportunity to use social networking software to overcome the limits of SCM software wasn't even a glimmer in my eye, or anyone else's, at the time.

I summed up my main beef in 1998 this way: "How does the supply chain owner, or owners, manage the community of decision makers?"

It was obvious that the software magic being applied to managing supply chains ignored this community of decision makers — the human aspect of the supply chain — in favor of highly automated processes that took as much human intervention out of the supply chain process as possible. "The problem with supply chain software is that consensus, agreement, and mutual benefit are not part of the built-in functionality of the software," I wrote.

So I had something of a lightbulb-on moment recently when it dawned on me, while talking with software execs about social networking, Web 2.0, and similar notions, that the community engagement and collaborative functionality that are the hallmarks of these nascent social networking offerings could provide the missing community function in SCM software.

As 2009 gets under way, I'm still hearing from supply chain managers that their SCM systems don't facilitate collaboration and community beyond a cursory level, and that much of the problem solving and exception management that are part of their day-to-day jobs still requires a phone call or some other personal touch that is simply antithetical to the SCM systems they have in place.

Granted, some SCM vendors have built collaborative tools into their software, but most users feel, rightly so, that this is collaboration 1.0 — more lip service than anything else. Meanwhile, most of the problems that bedevil supply chain managers and operators on a daily basis must be resolved outside their SCM software, if for no other reason than the fact that in a global, outsourced economy, the most important supply chain events typically happen outside a company's four walls and, by extension, outside its software's purview. This means that community and collaboration — the essence of Web 2.0 — need to become part of the supply chain system itself, not just an afterthought.

So, with 11 years of hindsight to back me up, I think it's high time SCM vendors took a few dashes of Facebook and LinkedIn, added some wiki and blog capabilities and maybe even a dose of Twitter, and started building in the social/collaborative functionality that the SCM world has lacked for so long. Keeping people connected, it turns out, is as important as keeping the manufacturers, suppliers, distributors, and OEMs they work for connected.

Putting community back into the supply chain may provide a leap forward in supply chain functionality that would be as great, or even greater, than the leap engendered when SCM first hit the market in the 1990s. I just hope we won't have to wait another 11 years to find out.