In the past, various communication mechanisms have been used across the organizations to build up interaction and collaboration. Some commonly known ones are emails, static web sites, intranet portals, document repository and printed/printable static contents.
These (traditional) tools were owned and maintained by organizations, were less interactive and less user friendly in terms of usage and interaction, and above all least updated. Most of the communication needs were not fulfilled by these existing methods, as all of them require the user’s participation to be very efficient.
With the advent of Web 2.0, Enterprise software has evolved into the next era, coined as Enterprise 2.0.
Enterprise social software (also regarded as Enterprise 2.0) is a suite of software, intended to link people related to an organization. It facilitates communication & collaboration for streamlining processes, innovation, tracking, brainstorming, thus improving the productivity and efficiency of the organization.
Here comes the very genuine question: What does Enterprise 2.0 offers to solve an Enterprise problem?
Enterprise 2.0 is the use of Web 2.0 based tools to improvise the existing processes. Some of the common tools are enlisted below:
1. Blogs
2. Forums
3. Wiki
4. Knowledge Sharing Systems
5. Pursuing Social groups or networks
6. Analytics & Reports
Below are few cases, where an organization can make use of Enterprise 2.0 tools:
1. I am new to the organization. I don’t know many people and I have a lot of queries regarding the administration, HR policies.
In general, it’s like bugging peers or HR every time until one gets used to the system.
Enterprise 2.0 solves this very easily through Wiki. Wiki is a web site which allows you to create/edit any number of interlinked pages. This could be used in several ways like information sharing, product guidelines/overview etc.
According to Andrew McAfee post:
Office supply company VistaPrint initiated a wiki in an attempt to capture what a new engineering hire needed to know. Within 18 months the wiki grew to contain over 11,000 pages placed into 600 categories, all of them generated by employees themselves rather than a professional knowledge management staff.
2. In a big manufacturing company, an engineer was facing some problem. He wanted to find an expert inside the organization, but he doesn’t know to whom he should talk, How to find the expert, say from a geographically different location of the organization.
But if the organization has Enterprise 2.0 tools like “Forums”. He can easily reach to experts by asking his questions on the right forum. With forums he can have solutions from any location of the organization.
3. A company wants to launch a new product in the market. So company has created 3-4 samples and uploaded on the intranet portal to get ratings, reviews and feedback from the employees.
After a week company would have a comprehensive set of information about which sample was most rated, what other samples was missing by users review and a broad range of feedbacks to improve upon it before the product launch.
Above examples clearly state that how an organization can use Enterprise 2.0 for employees (on Intranet) and improve the productivity. Enterprise 2.0 can be used in customer interfacing applications like CRM tools. Next example will identify how a 2.0 tool can be used for customers and what all benefits we can have from it:
4. Imagine if a product company opens up an online community/forum for its customers for improved & fast support by letting people helping each other.
According to Andre McAfee post: Set up an online community and let people help each other. As I wrote a while back, “an April 25 article by Steve Lohr in the New York Times that this is exactly what’s happening at Verizon. The article profiles Texan retiree Justin McMurry, who spends up to 20 hours per week at the community forums section of the company’s website, “supplying answers online to customer questions about technical matters like how to set up an Internet home network …”
To respond quickly and satisfying customers is just one part of it.
If the forum’s data, topics and messages could be collected and analyzed properly, to identify the areas where the customers face the problems, most in their product. Organization then can proactively handle the issues like product update/enhancements, product manual update and so on. So that user will have improved experience and less queries & support requirements.
Similarly the data from internal (employee) community could help the organization identifying the areas for training, process improvements, to find employee orientation.
Analytics and reports of the social data could be a big gain to organizations for increasing the efficiency of internal and external users. If organization applies some rules or use the social data for analysis then that data can be used in various ways to improves organizations business, quality and environment.
Evidently, there are many areas where Enterprise Social Software has proven its benefits:
1. Brainstorming any issue or idea
2. Feedbacks/Follow-ups/Status
3. Task allocation and tracking
4. Various documents sharing inside the organization
5. Collecting the individuals knowledge to be used by others
6. Having some general consensus on various topics like product ideas or new features or a Policy adoption
7. Interacting with customers & providing support
8. Project planning
9. Bug Tracking
10. Project Reviews
Some critics do argue by creating their own opinion on Enterprise 2.0 or Social Enterprise, saying that it is not solving any problems or is not fitting in the existing hierarchical structure of Enterprise, or is not safe. But in my opinion it’s all the matter of right choice in right direction.
On the basis of above examples, Enterprise 2.0 is apparently a mutiny and could be a huge gain to Enterprises, if a right solution is applied to the right problem.
Big brains create wonders, if facilitated by appropriate tools.
Inspiring articles:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Howlett/?p=1228
http://andrewmcafee.org/2009/09/e20-is-a-crock-discuss/
http://www.infoq.com/news/2009/09/Enterprise20
http://youarenew.blogspot.com/2009/05/web-20-is-not-new-coke-understand-its.html
http://www.interactiveinsightsgroup.com/blog1/social-media-examples-superlist-17-lists-and-tons-of-examples/
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