Wednesday, May 14, 2008

A 12 Step Guide to the benefits of Web 2.0

In a recent article at CIO Australia, they address the challenge of bringing Web 2.0 tools into Australia. Since this country is showing that they aren’t adapting web 2.0 as fast as the rest of the world, they give tweleve simple steps in order to encourage the adaption.

There are many reasons that CIOs are failing to adopt this process, but the magazine states one very important thing:

Organizations must increase their Web 2.0 awareness and capabilities now to prepare for the storm of innovation to come."

It only takes a few changes in the company in order to bring this huge collaborative machine into the picture, and CIO sees it:

"I believe the most important challenge for the CIO is to make the key decision makers in the company aware and to ensure Web 2.0 becomes increasingly embedded in their current and future strategy," Relihan says.

Training is not difficult, most of the tools used are already in common practice outside the workplace, and are seen as time wasters.

"If you want to find out what tools your staff are finding most useful at the moment, just go and see what your IT department is blocking."

The twelve guide to getting the most out of Web 2.0 into your enterprise are:

1. Wake Up Call at the Top – CIOs need to acknowledge that this is the computing and collaboration of the future.

2. Settle the Ownership question – Who calls the shots? Is it the upper level management or the IT department?

3. Borderless creativity – The value of these tools is still emerging and letting itself be seen. It can foster creativity throughout the organization whether the employees are sitting across the world from each other or on two separate continents.

4. If you’re not blogging how will you know what people say behind your back?

5. Consider the dark blog -- Companies are still figuring out how to control the blogs safely behind the firewalls. But employees can be the most valuable source of the information that flows from the blog

6. Push Co-Creation – According to this article, many CIOs see social networking as a waste of time. With the power of Web 2.0 tools, companies can be aided in inventing, developing and sending to new products to market faster due to the fact that they can communicate with other companies to see what they have done to make their enterprise work.

7. Beware of the stealth attack and stay alert – Know excalty which tool are correct for your business. If the wrong social networking tool is used, it could cause many problems throughout the enterprise.

8. Know what mashups will mess you up – Since two different web sources are combining in order to create one piece of information, the wrong source of information released could cause trouble. This could be a source of security problems, therefore it is important to know exactly what to use in these powerful tools.

9. Use web 2.0 for talent attraction and retention -- Most companies block these tools on the internet because they believe it is a great way for employees to waste time. But, if older generations and younger generations come together to work on these applications together, the possibilities are endless.

10. Use it for green computing—These tools allow people to access information faster, leading to a reduction in the need of power for computers. The carbon emissions dramatically decrease if computers are used right.

11. Use it to fix enterprise search – Many times, employees find it easier to find the information online than on the intranet. These tools can correct that.

12. Accept That Good Governance Reduces Exposure – The board and upper level management are the key to the success of these tools. With the correct guidance and exposure, these tools can lead to massive amounts of collaboration and innovation that could not otherwised be found without web 2.0 tools.

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