Congratulations to Fianna Fail on their new website
. Engaging with Joe Rospars (the web2.0 man behind Preisdent Obama’s campaign) was the right call. Fianna Fail, as the party in government, needs to use all tools at their disposal to get their message across – to persuade all of us to sign up for the tough medicine required. The site references their presence in Youtube, Facebook and Twitter.
I guess it's not surprising in the current difficult times that companies are looking to turn their pilots into solutions. After all part of the attraction of web 2.0 is the limited capital investment required – much of it is built on previously deployed infrastructure.
We have deployed several web 2.0 solutions. However the answer is, not surprisingly, shortcuts do not work. The capital outlay (including the initial services bill) may not be significant – but enterprise solutions only succeed where the company makes the commitment in terms of promotion, support, training, determination to put web 2.0 at the centre of some/all business processes.
Pilots are very different to enterprise wide deployments. They are there to provide a proof of concept, assist in marketing change in the organisation, figure out the detail of what will be required. But a pilot does not an enterprise solution make. Enterprise wide solutions, which aim to be critical to a business, need to be planned, configured, integrated, deployed, supported like enterprise solutions.
Sorry – the shortcuts don't work. That is not to say that clever planning, the right applications, etc cannot lead to faster, more effective deployment. But the hard work still has to be done.
Michael Indonopulos makes the point well in his recent blog. McKinsey's recent review of 50 web 2.0 deployments echoes all of this. I would support both sets of analysis.
Web 2.0 has changed the rules. The traditional engagement with the PR agency – formal and slow – does not work in an environment where the corporate and and the customer may already be interacting via blogs, bebo, facebook, whatever. And if the corporate is not part of this well perhaps the consumers are dialoging about the corporate using Twitter.
Yet getting th PR right is no less important. But the process needs to be facilitated and managed in a different way.
Neil O'Gorman's piece in the Sunday Business Post today addresses the issue.
Well made point by Coralie Thomson in 'Face-to-face communication is still a winning formula at Mars'. Reminds me of a comment from a colleague of mine the other day. She does not do this whole facebook thing to keep in touch with friends – 'if I want to get in touch with someone then I ring them or meet them'. Whereas I would tend to use facebook – and other social networks – to stay in touch and, in some circumstance, collaborate. And I guess my point would be, use the traditional channels and the new tools as you see fit and to reinforce each other.
Today's Irish Times includes detailed reference to 'Throwing Sheep in the Boardroom' – book by Soumitra Dutta and Matthew Fraser of INSEAD. It's another piece calling Irish business to action in terms of availing of web 2.0 technology. Companies have lots of employees who are used to using Facebook, Twitter, etc in collaborating in their daily lives – surely it is time to exploit the very real opportunities in Irish corporates? We all know the benefits and necessity of collaborating – be it family events, school projects, playing team sports, organising school runs. There is no argument about the merits of collaborating in the workplace – both internally and externally. We now have technologies which make all of this a great deal easier. And we have lots of people who want to use them.
The web site associated with the book is an excellent working example of the use of these technologies – incorporating the use of traditional brochure type avertising, a blog for publishing views of the authors (and inviting comment) and a wiki to encourage collaboration with interested parties across the globe.
As someone who has tried Microsoft's live search – what is the point? Are they looking to provide a product to match google? Or have they given up? Danny Sullivan certainly does not pull any punches in his comments (tough love for Microsoft Search).
I think Microsoft have done a nice job in their upgrades/ fixes to Live. However I think they face major challenges in trying to establish significant presence as a 'social network' partner. My own experience to date has been that having an established presence with Linkedin, Facebook and Plaxo – people do not want to hear from me suggesting they subscribe to another presence. Presumably, like me, they are inundated with invitations to subscribe to sites.
Interesting commentary in Irish Times today (http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2008/1121/1227137519515.html) re Web 2.0. Without doubt web 2.0 is one of the areas companies will look to 'make IT pay'. There are real opportunities for payback on previous investments in IT through exploiting relatively cheap investments in web 2.0. An excellent example is the number of companies who already have copies of WSS 3.0 (Windows SharePoint Services) but are not using it. This is the foundation for SharePoint and includes lots of functionality which can be deployed across organisations to support collaboration, teamwork, document management, knowledge management.
Everything we see internationally suggests that Irish business should be looking to drive the adoption of enterprise 2.0 and web 2.0.
Dion Hinchcliffe's talk at web 2.0 Europe
Dion reflects on the impact of 4 year's of web 2.0. He focuses on the move from 'push' to 'pull' systems. But much of the question is our readiness/ willingness to embrace and exploit the opportunity.
Who creates the value? (The network)
How much control do we have over our businesses?
How intellectual property works (creative commons…)?
Increases in transparency e..g in supply chain
Product development – we get that our customers tell us …but how do we listen to '000's of customers?
Operations – cloud computing
Customer service
Interesting to think about the value proposition that is the data companies now. Would point business towards the unclaimed classes of data.
In his post of May 03, Andrew McAfee gives summary feedback from surveying students in his Harvard class. Very positive comments on opportunities for practical deployment of Wikis across a wide range of businesses, from people at different levels of management. My own experience has been that the Wiki is easily adopted and is a powerful tool for supporting knowledge management and promoting collaboration in our own consulting business.