enterprise social software

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Enterprise 2.0 is a new enterprising environment which can be differentiated from traditional Enterprise (say, enterprise 1.0). The new enterprising environment use social software in "enterprise" (business) contexts. It includes social and networked modifications to company intranets and other classic software platforms used by large companies to organize their communication. In contrast to traditional enterprise software, which imposes structure prior to use, this generation of software tends to encourage use prior to providing structure.

Terminology

The Enterprise 2.0 term derives from Web 2.0 and is sometimes used to cover the introduction and implementation of social software within the enterprise, and the social and organizational changes related to its use. The term was coined by Andrew McAfee of Harvard Business School^[1] in the Spring 2006 MIT Sloan Management Review.^[2][3][4]

The term Enterprise Web 2.0 is sometimes used to cover the introduction and implementation of Web 2.0 technologies within the enterprise including those other than social software such as Rich Internet Applications (RIA), Software as a Service (SaaS), and Web as a Platform (WaaP).

Enterprise use of Web 2.0

Specific Web 2.0 and social computing tools that have been adapted for enterprise use include:

• Hypertext and unstructured search tools
• Wikis for authoring and linking
• Weblogs for authoring and storytelling.
• Social bookmarking for tagging and building folksonomy.
• RSS Web Feed Server and Newsreaders for signaling
• Collaborative planning software for peer-based project planning and management
• Social Networking to connect people in or associated with an organization
• Real-time Communications such as chat, audio and video conferencing and virtual environments

However, there is an important difference which is Enterprise 2.0 should consider content security and user differentiation more than Web 2.0.

Applications of enterprise social software

Enterprise 2.0 social networking capabilities can help organizations capture unstructured tacit knowledge as part of their Knowledge Management strategy. The challenge then becomes how to distill meaningful, re-usable knowledge from the other content also captured in tools like Blogs, Wikis and TWikis.

From: IDC's Whitepaper on Consumerizing the Enterprise. Web 2.0 in the workplace has so far been limited for the most part to the notion of enhanced content creation and sharing. One example is using a blog to add a human interactive touch to a vendor/customer or management/employee relationship. Another example is using a wiki to create central repositories of information to which any employee can contribute, thereby bringing to light previously hidden but useful information. But blogs and wikis are collaboration tools, and as such, they are useful mainly for sharing unstructured information associated with ad hoc or ongoing projects and processes, but not for structured informational retrieval.

On the other hand, most business processes rely on access to the appropriate structured data in real-time, or near real-time. These information pieces are spread across many enterprise applications, databases, and directories. Furthermore, because information is stored in different locations, the relation between the data is not obvious, and is usually only well understood by the information workers themselves.

Web 2.0 technologies might offer considerable efficiency potential to the enterprise relating to accessing structured information. For example, RSS allows users to define their own information "feeds" from data stored in corporate applications. Efficient use of RSS will essentially redefine how information is located and consumed in the enterprise. Another interesting development is the application mashup, a type of composite application. A mashup is a custom application that provides the context for merged data residing in multiple sources. Mashups also provide rich user interfaces that address the need for increased worker productivity by making it easier to find and use the information that a worker needs for a particular task or role. Collaborative planning tools, like Wrike, support emergent structures and empower organizations to bottom-up planning, information workers can plan and keep track of progress together with their help.

Through the adoption of Web 2.0 technology, information workers, like their consumer counterparts, will control their own user experience with more or less guidance from IT, and hence create for themselves the most intuitive and efficient work environment. The end result is improved worker productivity, morale and customer satisfaction.

Notes

1. ^

   Official page: [1].

2. ^ McAfee, Andrew (2006). ("Enterprise 2.0: The Dawn of Emergent Collaboration", MIT Sloan Management Review Vol. 47, No. 3, pp. 21-28.)
3. ^ The US Service Mark (serial number: 78893454) owned by Alvin Chang of Oakland, CA was filed on May 25, 2006; it seems to apply to the fields of business and educational conferences and provision of educational services related to Enterprise 2.0.
4. ^ See also the related Web 2.0 Trademark Controversy.

External links

• Enterprise 2.0 demos in Rich internet and social web applications for enterprise 2.0
• Enterprise 2.0 articles in Social Computing Magazine
• Enterprise 2.0 Conference held annually in Boston, Massachusetts during June
• Preparing for Intranet 2.0: how to integrate new communication technology into your intranet by Bill Ives and Kathleen Gilroy
• Web 2.0 for the Enterprise an article in Boxes and Arrows
• An industry overview in the form of a graphical map highlighting enterprise 2.0 trends and technologies
• The 3/2 Rule of Employee Productivity, financial research a building business case (when you add 10% employees the profitability of each drops by 6.3%)
• Writable Intranet, from khaitan.org
• "List of tools for the internal blogosphere" from scalefree.info
• "A collaborative tool for the enterprise global community"
• Advancing Insights - All about enterprise social networking software. From blogs, tags, bookmarks to creating and managing communities on the net or on an intranet. "Enterprise social networking software info"
• Stenmark, D. (2005). "How intranets differ from the web: organisational culture's effect on technology". Proceedings of ECIS2005, Regensburg, Germany, 26-28 May 2005.
• Karim R. Lakhani and Andrew P. McAfee, Case study on deleting "Wikipedia 2.0" article, Courseware #9-607-712, Harvard Business School, 2007 (GFDL) -- a case study on discussions surrounding the proposed deletion of an article which was merged into this page.
• Meet Charlie is an extremely popular presentation providing a simple view of enterprise2.0 in action within an imaginary organization

On Wikis in particular

• "Wikis evolve as collaboration tools" - InfoWorld Jan 2007 review of Wiki products designed for enterprise use
• An enterprise panel on the organizational uses of wiki technology, from Wikimania 2006.
• McAfee, Andrew (2006). Wikis at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein: (A), (B), (C) (9-606-074), HBSP

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