Web 2.0 In The Enterprise

Web 2.0 In The Enterprise March 2009

There is an ancient story of a group of blind men who touched different parts of an elephant to learn what it was like…

… based on the part they touched, each man had a different perspective

Fast forward to today - different people have a different understanding of the Web 2.0 beast

Instead of another definition, here’s Web 2.0 in action: Wikipedia page on Web 2.0 ( user generated content ) was used in Wordle ( web as a platform ) to create a tag cloud ( rich user experience ) that becomes reusable data

These recognizable brands highlight different aspects of Web 2.0… … but how does Web 2.0 apply to business?

“ The use of emergent social software platforms within companies, or between companies and their partners or customers ” - Andrew McAfee (Associate Professor, Harvard Business School) In a nutshell, Enterprise 2.0 is businesses using Web 2.0

Customers Employees Partners / Suppliers

Improve customer service

Acquiring new customers in existing markets

Getting customer participation in product development

Letting customers interact

Providing for other customer interactions

Enterprise 2.0

Achieving better integration with suppliers

Tapping network of experts

Lowering purchasing costs

Getting supplier participation

Carrying out other partner/supplier processes

Managing knowledge

Fostering collaboration across company

Enhancing company culture

Training

Developing products or services

Internal recruiting

Source: “Building the Web 2.0 Enterprise”, McKinsey & Company, July 2008 Businesses are using Web 2.0 to improve customer intimacy, internal operations, and supplier relationships

Ways Enterprise 2.0 fits in the employee lifecycle

Attract & Find Potential Employees

External facing employee generated content (blogs , videos , pictures, podcasts)

Recruitment videos (YouTube channel)

Social / professional networking (Linkedin)

Virtual world presence (Second Life)

Presentation sharing (Slideshare)

Media aggregators (Netvibes)

Settling In – The First Few Months

Employee profiles (internal social networking)

Virtual world orientation training

Subscription services (RSS)

Learn & share (wikis, blogs)

Private network messaging (microblogging)

Develop, Motivate & Recognize

Communication (blogs)

Collaboration (wikis)

Community (social networking)

Folksonomy (tagging)

Subscription services (RSS feeds)

Virtual meetings / training (virtual world)

Private network messaging (microblogging)

Collective wisdom (shared bookmarks, ranking, commenting)

...all discoverable by a strong enterprise search

Part Ways... But Stay In Touch

Capture & retain intellectual capital

Alumni social network

Life Cycle stages from “Hire, Inspire, Admire, Retire - A condensed Employee Life Cycle” by F. John Reh Hire Inspire Admire Retire / Separate Employee Life Cycle

Michael Brown “ Architecting IT for business ” Over the past 9 years as an Enterprise Architect, Michael successfully aligned the IT strategy and business goals for a large telecommunications company. Mike recently landed a new job at an IT giant, with professional networking tools playing a large role in the recruitment. Businessman photographs courtesy vierdrie.nl Let’s follow Michael as he starts his new job…

2:1 - the ratio of employee recommended content to employer recommended content web2 portal, mashups The first day on the job, Mike uses the onboarding mashup on the intranet to procure a blackberry and request office space.

Interfaces to external social bookmarking sites allow him to follow links and stories tagged by colleagues social bookmarking

Mike uses the tag cloud to navigate to links that interest him folksonomy

At the company’s private region in a virtual world, he reviews orientation training and learns about tools at his disposal virtual world training

Later, he updates his profile with his skills, experience, and area of interest and expertise Based on his profile, he is offered recommendations of groups he may be interested in employee profile (social networking), recommendation engine

Michael Brown ( edit ) Mike introduces himself on the internal microblogging platform. He receives recommendations for groups and colleagues he should follow, from colleagues he may never meet Screenshot courtesy Yammer microblog

Mike begins blogging about lessons learned as an enterprise architect He also updates the company wiki and adds a few useful links blog, wiki

He is alerted when a colleague (across the world) microblogs for help with a proposal. Mike directs Rachael to his blog post addressing a key aspect of the RFP Photograph courtesy Mario Alberto Magallanes Trejo microblog, blog, RSS

With the RFP published on the internal wiki, Mike and the team successfully co-author the response. This also builds a wealth of information that is indexed by their enterprise search engine, instead of residing in email archives or on individual hard drives wiki, search engine

A colleague asked Michael what he would have done without these Enterprise 2.0 tools… … he thought for a while, laughed, and said “ You’re kidding, right? ”

“ It would have taken me forever to get up to speed and start contributing I would never have been able to collaborate with so many colleagues from across the world My expertise would have been trapped up here (tapping his head), or would have had limited reach But most of all, it would be a bigger loss for my company than for me…”

A quick look at Enterprise 2.0 technologies used in Mike’s example Technology Definition Some Business Uses

Mashups

A mashup is a custom application that combines data from one or more third-party sources into a single integrated tool to deliver new functions & insights

Mashups that access and combine data from internal and external data sources and software systems that meet the need of small groups of users

Social Bookmarks

Social bookmarks are a way for users to store, tag, organize, search, and manage web page bookmarks. These bookmarks can be shared with others, who in turn score the bookmarks, resulting in a list of links a group considers important

Communities of interest can create and maintain a common set of links

Folksonomy /

Social Tagging

Folksonomy is a user-generated taxonomy, where users can collaboratively create and manage tags to categorize content based on the their mental model.

Content authors and readers can assign tags to content, which can then become metadata to help find that content

Tag clouds can be used to visualize these tags, facilitating search, discovery and navigation

Virtual World

A virtual world is a computer-based simulated environment where users can interact with others and the environment virtually, via avatars

Training

Virtual town halls / meetings

Technology Definition Some Business Uses

Social Networks

Social networks help people find and connect to others online with whom they share something in common

Employee profile pages with information they can manage, with recommendation engines to suggest colleagues / groups of interest

Ability to form communities of interest

Blogs

User published content, usually with an area of focus, presented in reverse chronological order. Blogs usually offer a mechanism for feedback and comments

Leadership to inform and communicate with employees

Employees to share work-related ideas, activities, events etc.

Microblogs

Short message updates, which can be viewed users who are “following” the author or a group the author belongs to. Entries can be published from any internet connected device (phone, handheld, computer)

Reach out for help / input to a network / group

Share quick thoughts, ideas, knowledge

Wikis

Wikis are web pages that can be edited by any authorized user , encouraging collaboration and open sharing of information

Share information / knowledge

Collaborative authoring

Project documentation

RSS

Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds are used to publish frequently updated work (blogs, news) to users who are interested in receiving those updates

Employees subscribe to RSS feeds to automatically receive updates of content that matters to them (group news, leader blog), instead of visiting those sites individually

www.Strategist.Net Title slide Web 2.0 logos courtesy Stabilo Boss: www.flickr.com/photos/stabilo-boss/93136022/