Technology research company Forrester predicts that by 2013, social software, the application of Web 2.0 for the enterprise, will grow at an annual rate of 43% per year. This is the fastest growing sector in the enterprise software industry. However, many people are confused by what Web 2.0 is and its significance in the workplace and in culture, including those planning to adopt it.
Web 2.0 is a revolution in how people use the Internet to interact with each other. This enables people to use technology in a way they have never been able to. Consequently, websites developers have reacted and evolved rapidly to adapt to these new users and companies have realised that the Internet is a medium of expression, sharing and revelation.
Users have voted with their clicks for sites that appeal to their personal sense of expression. Sites that impose constraints are quickly discarded. The ones that allow individuals to write, edit or tag rise quickly up the internet charts of popularity. Web 2.0 has became a democratic revolution with core principles of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly on the internet.
Social networking sites allow everyone to become a contributor by simply creating their home page and enhancing or adorning it in response to friends doing the same thing. Many large corporations have skills or profile pages for their employees.
Web 2.0 is not anarchic, nor is it necessarily bad for business. To try to control Web 2.0 is like trying to put one’s finger in the dyke. It is happening and there is nothing that business can do to prevent it. When companies try to restrict access, they either find that the roadblocks have been circumscribed or that employees go elsewhere.
Generation Y, has only known the empowerment of the internet and has become accustomed to have their vote counted. To try and control it can only disenfranchise them. To empower them yields an optimistic workforce, with conversation between stakeholders in enlightened collaboration.
In addition the Baby Boomers, are starting to retire, taking with them some of the most valuable knowledge ever accumulated. Knowledge management programmes over the last have failed to capture that knowledge, web 2.0 could be the way to retaining it.
Change in the enterprise is likely to come from outside as well. Knowledge workers use Google more than any internal systems. These websites set further expectations on the internal systems enterprises use and create a requirement to integrate information with these external sources of information. These external sources of information provide something that internal information systems could never provide – a critical mass of opinion using the “Wisdom of the Crowds”.
The most profound effect Web 2.0 will have is on the way we do business. Employees will use this freedom of speech to provide valuable feedback to the business. Customers will become part of the decision-making process and allow us to design the most imaginative products and services.
Care should be taken in what is opened up. However, rather than treating Web 2.0 content suspiciously, businesses should ring fence the information that must be controlled and open up the rest to participation.
Smart businesses see the opportunities and are embracing the Internet in ways they haven’t before.
About Digital Bridges
Digital Bridges creates high performance organisations by unlocking the business value of the web. We create digital strategies, user requirement and functional specifications for Intranets, websites and web applications. We also develop and implement social media strategies and create powerful digital brands using eMarketing and Communication.
Digital Bridges is technology agnostic and partners with great technology companies in order to ensure that our solutions are fit for purpose and deliver on organisational strategy.
Digital Bridges approaches the web from a management consulting position and relies heavily on rigorous academic thinking as well as business experience. It is headed up by Kate Elphick who has a Law degree and an MBA from GIBS. Kate has spent the last fifteen years of her career on the business side of the IT industry with companies such as Datatec, Didata, Business ConneXion and Primedia. Her skills include innovation and growth through marketing, communication, collaboration, knowledge management, human capital, performance management, process engineering and BI.
Digital Bridges has a broad range of experience working with significant, successful clients in the Financial, Gaming, Tourism, Pharmaceutical, ICT, Legal, Airline, Professional Services, Media and Public Sectors.
To find out more about Digital Bridges, please visit www.digitalbridges.co.za or contact Kate Elphick on katee@digitalbridges.co.za.
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