A new buzz word has arrived "enterprise 2.0" to support the reasons for existence of the emerging "web 2.0" technology companies. I found the web buzzing with this new article from Andrew MaAfee, Associate professor at Harvard Business School and subsequently very pertinent comments from Nicholas Carr, author of Does IT matter? To be honest, both these posts do suggest a middle ground, but Nicholas definitely puts in a dose of reality. After working in consulting and other industries over the last hype curve, i have seen this first hand....how some of these ideas will end up on a power point and will be a fertile ground for concept selling sessions?
From my experience, the reality of the impact of web 2.0 technologies in the enterprise will be driven by their ability to answer some basic questions. If there are logical answers to these questions, none of the business users will question their acceptance inside Enterprises
- How can business users use these tools in their daily job and do things efficiently, effectively and add to the bottom line of the company?
- How can a business user and an IT manager speak about the tools in a language both of them undertsand and relate to each other's jobs and utlimately the company's bottom line?
- Can the user experience of these tools be related to some of the hugely popular consumer applications..which would lower the barriers to adoption and reduce the need for costly training sessions?
So, in summary there is defintely a relevance of these "web2.0" technologies inside enterprise, but the trick will be their ability to move from a "conceptual" model to a more "realistic" implementation model causing least disruption across the enterprise environment and demonstrate ROI's in weeks and months....and NOT year's. Companies who have products that support the basic 3 questions through real life demonstrations will drive adoption across enterprises.
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