Web 2.0 for the Enterprise
The group discussion on enterprise 2.0 on the fast forward blog has been very interesting and valuable.
Here is a very good outline of what it means to move web 2.0 into the enterprise. The principles are drawn from the consumer web. Zia Zaman has translated them to the enterprise:
Explore posts in the same categories: Main Page* Organizing the Unorganized. The value of metadata is increasing. As we gather more metadata about our enterprise data, we have the opportunity not just to mine it, but also to act upon it in ways that achieve better business results, including gaining a 360-degree view of the customer, avoiding duplication of existing analyses, and gaining new perspectives from combining external, rich media, structured, and unstructured data.
* Enhancing Who Enterprises Choose as Consumers - Narrowcasting. Forget the Long Tail’s effect on consumer choice. Think about narrowcasting and the newfound ability, through the Web, to create niche markets that are profitable by precisely selecting exactly which products and services to sell to which micro-audiences. This is a matching exercise, at its core.
* Empowering Individuals to Be the Creators of Enterprise Data. Now, almost everyone in the enterprise is able to contribute to a business decision. Blogs, wikis, and search give the employee the ability to find, create and share insights that can be applied to decisions across the organization. Expert location may be the next killer app in the high performance workplace.
* Facilitating Constant Communication. Employees are more connected now than ever. Instant messaging and mobile email have elongated the work day and allow the employee to stay in touch with the enterprise 24/7/365. The opportunity to more easily communicate with each other, and with customers, opens the door to new business processes and collaborative innovation that takes advantage of constant connectedness.
* Sharing with Friends. Personal networks exist within the Enterprise. They are a constant source of support, advocacy, advice, and political capital. They are also the number one source for answers. Sharing with friends is the most easily applied Web 2.0 theme, especially for the younger Web natives who don’t separate their online and offline, on-the-job and off-the clock lives. Enterprise cultures are about to change as your employee base is infiltrated with Gen Yers, who have grown up without any distinction between virtual and actual interaction.
* Enabling a Multimedia Revolution. Multimedia will change certain enterprise communication patterns and the very nature of what is considered enterprise data. Collecting voice data from traders on the trading floor to feed it into the bank’s CRM is just one example of how traditional unstructured media can now be harnessed to deliver keener insights. Extraction of context and meaning from voice in real-time may be the salvation for the telcos.
* Making it Easier to Find and Spend Online. Web 1.0 featured search engines like Google and portals like Yahoo. Now on the Web, vertical search enables searching for specific categories of information. Jobs, news, video, coupons, products, photos, and myriad other categories have their own search engines. This extends nicely to the Enterprise and to the networks of companies that sell to each other, creating a B2B search explosion.
* Democratizing Labor Markets: Outsourcing. This is the first Enterprise 2.0 trend to hit mainstream media in a massive way back in 2002. The Internet enabled the outsourcing of business processes and IT and customer service and so many other functions so effectively that it is no longer visible. And we are moving towards a new granularity of outsourcing; for example, 5 people project team outsourcing partial research to a team of 3 contractors for a short range pay for performance contract). This new p2p (project to project) outsourcing is inherently a search/matching problem.
* Breaking Down Geographic Barriers. Collapsing time and space to make the enterprise operate in a unified fashion isn’t easy, but this old Enterprise 2.0 theme has been at work for the past decade, creating a revolution in the virtual office. The benefits to the firm go beyond costs and hiring the best talent but also give the individual work processes the chance to benefit from expertise that is globally distributed.
* Engaging the Individuals in Conversation with the Powerful. Never has it been easier for average people to engage in conversation with the powerful. Associates at all levels have real access to a conversation with their senior management, empowered by Enterprise tools such as Blog comments, interactive chats, Innovation Jams, virtual town halls, and other forums. These conversations improve the senior management’s decision making by helping them better understand what matters and by getting great ideas. And it lessens the sense of frustration that many have had in the past about being disenfranchised and incapable of accessing their CEO.
June 6th, 2007 at 9:46 pm
I just love development. Especially in IT. It's such a fast area of business that if you stand and think about it you can get dizzy. A year can host 2 to 3 big new improved platforms. And I think Web 2.0 is one of them. Minimizing costs and increasing benefits. This is the dream of all software manufacturers. Of course it can still be improved but the potential is there to remain. And it's a huge one.
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