Forrester recently released a 30 page report - Forrester TechRadar™ For I&KM Pros: Enterprise Web 2.0 - Wikis And Social Networks Are Ready To Deliver High Value To Your Enterprise, Q4 2008 by Gil Yehuda with Kyle McNabb, G. Oliver Young, Sara Burnes, Zachary Reiss-Davis. They picked 11 technologies to review: blogs, forums, mashups, microblogs, podcasts, prediction markets, RSS, social bookmarks, social networks, widgets, and wikis.
The report summary says, “No longer new, Web 2.0 technologies solve problems that enterprises have today — but most have not yet used these tools to anywhere near their potential. Waiting for tools to mature seems prudent, but if you wait too long, employees may create their own collaborative environments on the Web. Timing your next move requires you to track the maturity of enterprise Web 2.0 technologies. In a careful examination of the marketplace and trends for enterprise Web 2.0 tools, we reveal that organizations find wikis valuable, forums stable (though underutilized), and report mixed success with blogs. Enterprise social networking tools stand ready to redefine workplace collaboration, adding new value to your organization's content by associating it with peers and experts.”
ReadWriteWeb quotes Oliver Young, an analyst at Forrester Research on the report team, who stated that despite there being a lot of buzz about the consumer market for web 2.0 applications, "the greatest opportunity today for vendors is in the business-to-business collaboration space". It goes on the add that the report indicates that “the cultural resistance" to social networks will "eventually break, allowing workers to connect with like-minded colleagues and enabling a collaboration channel that previously didn't exist in the enterprise." On wikis, ReadWrite Web wrote that “Forrester noted that users have already reported success with wiki projects and it expects this to grow even more. Wikis are most successful, said Forrester, when sponsored by business leaders and connected to business processes.”
This last statement is certainly true for all Enterprise 2.0 implementations, not just wikis. I would add that the implication for this success factor is that tools that, by their nature, can more closely align with business processes will be the most successful. The two tools that Forrester promotes the most fall into this category. Wikis can become team collaboration workspaces for business processes and social networking can help connect the dots within an organization to smooth the flow of information within a business process. One the other hand, blogs can be a useful communication channel, especially to the world outside the organization, but they are more of a broadcast medium than one that fits within a business process.
The report indicates that much of the success for implementing Enterprise 2.0 tools lies in the non-technical issues such as sponsorship, governance, cultural change and business alignment. These are all areas where we at Lyons Consulting work with our clients to help these tools achieve their potential.
Forrester also issued a related report for enterprise 2.0 vendors, Forrester TechRadar For Vendor Strategists: Enterprise Web 2.0, using the same methodology. Both Toby Ward and Bill Ives provided extensive comments on this version of the Forrester report. Toby said his study on Intranet 2.0 reveals similar findings about the adoption rate and usefulness of these technologies – and why some companies aren’t bothering to adopt them. You can get a copy by participating in the study. See his post for details.
Thank you for the mention and the link. Can you tell me about this report? Forrester has never talked to me, and in fact in the past has refused me reports that I wanted to write about, despite my status as a writer and analyst. I'm wondering how they managed to get extensive comments from me for a US$1700+ report.
Many thanks,
Toby
Posted by: Tobyward | April 21, 2010 at 10:48 PM
Thanks for the mention and link. I like the way you extended the discussion of this report. Good luck with the blog. Bill Ives
Posted by: Bill Ives | December 11, 2008 at 03:09 PM