When most people think about feeds, they of think social apps like Twitter. Even at Stream, most of our example use cases and sample applications are centered around social. It’s no surprise, considering that Recode’s 2017 list of top 10 mobile apps include Facebook, Instagram, and Snap (aka Snapchat). However, we’re seeing an emergence of B2B use cases where feeds are a perfect mechanism to achieve a business need. I’ve compiled a few examples to get your creative juices flowing on how feeds can help your B2B apps.
Supply Chain
Imagine an extremely complex supply chain system - tracking items in shipping containers leaving docks in Hong Kong, all the way to the loading docks of major US retailers. With feeds, you could have individuals interested in those items follow them so that they get notified when they clear customs or have delays, and when they arrive at the distribution centers. Automated systems could follow those feeds as well, using data to update estimated arrival dates or recommend changes to deliveries based on real time needs.
Project Management
Having a feed attached to your project can be a great way to bring transparency to all projects pieces. Whenever someone estimates the points for a story, pulls a story to work on, and/or a story is accepted, all those events can be aggregated into a feed. Burndown, MVP completion date or team composition changes? Throw it in the feed. Add in the ability for people to ask questions and add comments and you have a rich feed giving everyone visibility into the entire project.
CRM
Most CRMs already have several feeds in use today. When you look at a deal there’s often a feed showing all actions that have occurred, as well as task reminders for every deal. Each CRM user could have a feed showing actions they have take as well as tasks they have coming up. The feeds can also be used to allow teams to collaborate on deals by commenting, asking questions, and sharing best practices.
These 3 examples are just a few use cases in which feeds have a clear B2B fit. There are many business processes with clear steps outlined. At each step there can be a notification, specific instructions or information, and other data that could go into a feed – alerting users to both status and problems.
What’s your B2B use case that can be enhanced with a feed?