Web 2.0 and the Enterprise
How Modern Technology May Affect How Enterprises Do Business
Mar 13, 2009
Any person that is a CIO, IT manager, Project Manager, Department Head, or even just a person that utilizes a computer and the internet during the course of your work-day is, or soon will be, very familiar with the term “Web 2.0.”
Many people are most likely already familiar with the services and applications associated with theWeb 2.0 concept and just haven’t realized there was a catchy term for them.
Anyone with teenage children is definitely aware of Web 2.0 technologies. What typical teenager doesn’t have a MySpace or Face Book page and use messaging and conferencing programs ad infinitum?
These technologies, however, have matured to the point that they are now finding their way into the business world. Both small and large enterprises are gradually adopting these technologies, some more enthusiastically than others.
What is Web 2.0?
Tim O’Reilly, Oreillynet.com “What is Web 2.0?” 9/30/2005, claims that “The concept of "Web 2.0" began with a conference brainstorming session between O'Reilly and MediaLive International.” The discussion during this session resulted in the Web 2.0 Conference.
Social networking, wikis, RSS (Really Simple Syndication), mash-ups, messaging, blogs and other communication and collaborative tools, all falling under the Web 2.0 moniker, have been working their way into enterprises for the past several years. But, as G. Oliver Young predicted in his Forrester.com article entitled “Top Enterprise Web 2.0 Predictions for 2008” 1/25/2008, in the last year Web 2.0 Technologies made significant headway into many enterprises.
This trend is expected to gain even more steam in 2009. This is especially true for enterprise social networks, as a recent Deloitte.co.uk TMTPredictions post entitled “Social Networks in the enterprise” states.
Benefits of Web 2.0 Technology in the Business World.
There are many obvious benefits to employing Web 2.0 technologies within the enterprise. These include but are not limited to:
- Improved communication
- Increased interdepartmental collaboration
- Company-wide business process efficiency gains
- Reduction of overlapping tasks
These benefits can result in increased resources available to be more freely allocated between business units – based on project completion goals; rather than departmental budgets.
However,these are just some of the benefits to be reaped by implementing a successful Web 2.0 strategy within a corporation. There are more intrinsic benefits as well relating to each of the above.
These benefits are outlined below:
Improved communication
Improved communication sounds innocouos and unimportant, but it is astounding how poorly different departments and business units communicate with eachother within most enterprises. Improving communication facilitates the intrinsic business benits listed below:
- Increased interdepartmental cooperation.
- Improved BI (Business Intelligence) amongst individual business units.
- More informative status reports to project managers.
- Faster overall project completion.
There are very real business benefits to be gained by fostering more interdepartmental communication.
Increased collaboration
Increased collaboration sounds like meaningless 'business-speak', but it too is an important and often overlooked aspect neccessary for a company's success. Especially in today's economy, this can be beneficial to the enterprise in the following ways:
- Allows for project managers to build better project teams.
- Streamlined business processes.
- Eliminates redundant tasks between workgroups.
- Accelerated project completion times.
- Reduced overall project costs.
- Improved relations between different business units.
Again, this shows more of the intrinsic benefits associated with incorporating Web 2.0 technology with current enterprise protocols and practices.
Company-wide business efficiency gains
Efficiency gains are always touted from on high by management. "Do more with less," is the CEO/CfO/CIO mantra, even more so now and in the future and Web 2.0 technology can help in the ways listed below:
- Minimized departmental red tape for new projects.
- Reduced business processes needed to perform a task.
- More transparent business intelligence relayed to management.
- increased ownership of and acceptance of new policies and procedures.
- More agility between all of the business units.
As companies struggle with diminishing profits, improved efficiency within every department and business unit will be of utmost importance.
Reduction of Overlapping Tasks
Overlapping tasks are inevitable within an enterprise. For example, three workgroups filing the same acquisition form or different departments unknowingly working on the same part of a project. While project managers and department heads try to catch overlapping tasks, they can't catch them all . Web 2.0 technology's inherent social networking features can benefit companies as follows:
- Less paperwork to be processed by eliminating redundant forms.
- Maximized use of both clerical and project personnel.
- Cost savings in labor due to more astute task assignment.
- Streamlined business processes between departments.
- Cost savings in materials used to perform overlapping tasks.
These may sound like small things but for an agile business, every penny saved is a penny earned.
Risks of Web 2.0 and the enterprise
While there are many benefits to implementing Web 2.0 technology, there are also some risks, Some of these risks are listed below:
- Compromised network integrity. Web 2.0 technologies allow actions normally forbidden by IT, such as the opening of ports on the router and transferring potenially unsafe materials.
- Information Security. Recently increased Government regulation requires security of data to an extent that Web 2.0 technologies alone simply cannot provide.
- Theft of vital corporate information using Web 2.0 technology. Allowing employees to have their own blogs and social sites can result in them intentionally or unintentionally leak corporate secrets or information damaging to the company.
- Overuse/Abuse. Implementation of Web 2.0 technologies comes with the danger that employees will spend more time chatting,blogging and socializing than they do on their real work.
- Loss of service. If a company becomes dependent on Web 2.0 technologies, what happens if employees cannot access these technologies due to unforseen circumstances?
All of these risks are enough to give a CIO, or even a CEO/CFO, nightmares, but then so did Web 1.0.
Overall, it seems that the benefits outweigh the risks involved with a carefully implemented Web 2.0 technology strategy for the enterprise, but a person can’t help but wonder what “Web 3.0” might bring.
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