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“Collaborative tools are overloading employees and killing productivity—to the tune of $588 billion a year, according to a January study by Basex, a collaboration technologies consulting firm,” writes Brian Watson of CIO Magazine (see Web 2.0: Too Good to Be True?). “It’s the money-saving argument that’s getting pushback lately.”
Web 2.0 does not deliver the ROI, does not live up the hype, and is not even close to being a top priority for senior management (not all, but most).
A CIO Magazines study, Top Technology Priorities for 2008 finds that even techies don’t consider Web 2.0 as a priority. A survey of 250 “top IT executives” from a collection of small, medium and large organizations doesn’t even touch on the issue of Web 2.0.
In fact, the top 10 technology priorities are:,
• Creating or improving strategic applications (cited by 37%)
• Expanding IT infrastructure to keep up with growth (cited by 32%)
• Improving IT security (cited by 31%)
• Instituting a more flexible IT infrastructure (cited by 27%)
• Improving the quality of information (cited by 26%)
• Standardizing and consolidating IT infrastructure (cited by 24%)
• Discovering and deploying innovative, new technologies (cited by 23%)
• Improving ROI of IT investments (cited by 21%)
• Reducing the complexity of information systems (cited by 21%)
• Replacing legacy systems (cited by 21%)
A case could be made that seventh ranked priority (“innovative, new technologies”) could in fact include Web 2.0, but these tools are hardly new – they’ve been around for 4+ years.
A look inside the organization, and what each company has done confirms our suspicions. As I reported earlier this week in my article Intranet 2.0 on the rise, but barely, the deployment and use of Web 2.0 on the corporate intranet has barely advanced in the past two years.
Jane McConnell’s Global Intranet Trends Report reveals that very few organizations have implemented or optimized Intranet 2.0 tools for general use in most organizations:
• Only 6% have blogs in general use (another 23% have them implemented it in some form) while 45% are still in test mode.
• Only 7% have implemented commenting tools (e.g. post a comment to a story on the intranet) in general use (another 35% have implemented it in some form).
Still worse, security and privacy are major concerns and a huge barrier to widespread adoption of Web 2.0. An Economist Intelligence Unit for KMPG found that 52% of executives (of 472) say securing and protecting sensitive data was the top barrier to adopting the Web 2.0.
It’s not that there isn’t value in Web 2.0 – I believe there’s tremendous value, and I live in breathe it with my blogging – it’s that most companies to don’t agree, don’t see value in it (or are scared by the security experts), aren’t realizing the value, and have better things to do.
If Web 2.0 tools are to become common place on the corporate website and intranet (and open to general use by most if not all users and employees), website managers will have to continue to address bigger priorities first, including getting the attention of senior management with reliable intelligence and thorough business cases that support Web 2.0.
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Nice posting Guys...
Comments (2)
Web 2.0 is a term often bandied about without being put into context and that's what I think these reports are doing. Also, change management is a vital component to implementing Web 2.0 applications. Companies must move from a possessive "knowledge is power for me" attitude to one of "knowledge shared through collaboration benefits us all". And so saying, IT isn't wrong, most organizations aren't ready to implement and follow through on the benefits of Web 2.0. Its the companies that really foster team work that can take the lead, and that includes IT working with Communications (oh my) and together going to senior management.
Posted by catherine | February 14, 2008 8:43 AM
Posted on February 14, 2008 08:43
1998 called and wants its grumpy predictions of failure back... If history has taught us anything, it is that it's CIOs that fail to make the grade, not innovation, in this case Web 2.0. Since most CIOs, intranet managers and executives can barely spell facebook it comes as no surprise that they don't know what to do with new technologies that enable a very different way of working. The failure is largely in the leadership, application and vision for these technologies. Of course a large segment of the workforce in large corporations are not used to writing a blog, subscribing to multiple newsfeeds or using the crowd to participate in problem solving. In such an environment, plonking down personal pages, blogs and wikis are likely to be as successful as a chocolate teapot.
I was recently at a CIO conference where the lack of knowledge was as striking as it was sad, but once they could glom onto real applications of these technologies in their core workflows, what they should replace (email as CMS), IM and other perishable channels, sparks started to fly. Still - it is a long way from a good idea to good execution - and your average CIO (and by definition, most are) is not up to the job...
Posted by Rob | March 22, 2008 9:42 PM
Posted on March 22, 2008 21:42