Stephen Dale's Posterous - Passionate about the social web, collaboration, learning, sharing and trying to make sense of an increasingly complex world.
Posted on September 4, 2009 by Steve Dale in Reports, Web2.0
The latest McKinsey quarterly report provides results of a survey of 1,700 executives from around the world who were asked about the value that they/their companies had realised from their Web 2.0 deployments.
69% of respondents report that their companies have gained measurable business benefits, which includes more innovative products and services, more effective marketing, better access to knowledge, lower cost of doing business, and higher revenues.
The survey also found that the most successful companies integrated Web 2.0 technologies with the work flows of their employees, creating a ‘networked company, which also linked them with customers and suppliers.
Highest on the list of benefits reported by the survey respondent was the ability to gain access to expertise outside company walls more quickly.
Analysis of how companies were using Web 2.0 technology revealed use of RSS feeds and microblogs, where Twitter was the most popular, with blogs, wikis and podcasts being the most heavily used technologies, and the most effective for exchanging knowledge.
The survey results indicate that a different type of company may be emerging – one that makes intensive use of interactive technologies. This ‘networked organisation’ is characterised both by the internal integration of Web tools among employees, as well as use of the technologies to strengthen channels with external stakeholders – customers and business partners.
Closer inspection of the survey results reveal three aspects of management that were criticval to superior performance:
a lack of internal barriers to Web 2.0
a culture favouring open collaboration
early adoption of Web 2.0 technologies
The report goes on to say that many companies experiment with Web 2.0 technologies, but that creating a critical mass of committed users is difficult. Successful adoption requires that the tools be integrated into the user’s work flow. Ratings by peers and online recognition of status are important factors in encouraging wider Web 2.0 adoption.
Looking ahead, there appears to be satisfaction with Web 2.0 among all respondents, and that the full benefits of Web 2.0 are still being explored.
How and why should local authorities and Government be planning to exploit the collaborative features of Web 2.0? This article was originally published in IT Adviser late last year.
Gartner has just published its latest ‘Magic Quadrant’ report for Social Software. If nothing else, it gives you a list of all the key vendors in this space, though you may personally disagree with where they are placed in the various quadrants. For example, Microsoft is considered to have more completeness of vision and greater ability to execute than Google. Maybe Gartner analysts haven’t been speaking to anyone struggling to implement MOSS 2007!
The definition of the market they are covering in this reports is:
Market Definition/Description
We view this market as consisting of products that focus on team collaboration, communities and social interaction. The buyers in this market are looking for persistent virtual environments, in which participants can create, organize and share information, as well as interact with each other. They are deployed internally among employees or contractors as well as externally for partners, customers, prospects or other stakeholders. The business uses of these products vary in terms of degree of formality and openness — from team information sharing and project coordination among a small, homogeneous group within an enterprise; to sharing best practices within a business unit; to encouraging socialization and knowledge transfer among employees or even external participants in a partner or customer network.
In general terms, products that compete in this market, help users to:
Find out about each other.
Form teams, communities or informal groups.
Work together on the same work objects.
Discuss and comment on their work.
Organize work from their perspective.
Identify relevant work.
Discover other people with common interests.
Learn from others’ expertise.
Some specific uses of products in this market include:
Sharing team information and coordinating project-related activities by adding permanence and structure to ad hoc communications.
Empowering communities of experts and interested parties (bonding people by specific interests, capturing best practices, disseminating lead-user innovation and providing an informal support network).
Facilitating social interaction by helping people to establish and strengthen personal relationships, develop trust and, in the end, to reduce friction and accelerate the business processes that people are engaged in.
Accessing relevant knowledge and expertise that can be used to formulate a plan of action when decisions need to be made.
We adjusted the name of this market from “Team Collaboration and Social Software” to just “Social Software” (see “Magic Quadrant for Team Collaboration and Social Software, 2007″) in order to:
Simplify it, as social interaction support implies team collaboration support.
To recognize the provision of social interaction support as one of the most important sources of differentiation among the products from established and new vendors.
To take into account the addition of blogs and wikis in the minimum functionality for inclusion (see below).
The products available in this market are generally deployed internally and managed by IT departments or service partners, although an increasing number of vendors make their products available via SaaS and, in some cases, as managed appliances.
I will leave readers to draw their own conclusions from the report, but for me, it doesn’t look like a completely unbiassed and objective assessment of the social computing environment.
A number or reports and one consultation document on the topic of Digital Inclusion were published on Friday 24th October 2008 by the Department for Communities and Local Government (CLG).
There is also a discussion forum to discuss the main themes of the Digital Inclusion Action Plan.
Links are on the CLG website but replicated here for convenience:
Social media uptake is driven by an audience of early adopters. This group are primarily technology enthusiasts with a natural inclination to sharing information and insight. Google, Yahoo!, Apple and Microsoft take the top four spots respectively.
House of Commons’ Culture Media and Sport Committee calls on social media sites like MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube to implement stricter policies, impose more content filtering, and better facilitate processes to report abuse.
New report just issued by Parachute Consulting. Demistifies the KM concepts, uses real-world examples from the public sector of good practice from which others can learn and links in Information Management deciplines with KM strategy. Includes case study of local government communities of practice.
I worry that some people believe this sort of rubbish. According to the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) the average UK worker spends ninety minutes a week misusing corporate internet connections.
The CBI said that workers are spending roughly an hour and a half out of their week visiting web sites that have no relation to their work whatsoever. Cumulatively, it said, this costs UK businesses some £10.6bn in lost productivity over the course of a year.
The CBI polled some 503 businesses, who it said employed nearly one million workers between them. Two thirds of those who took part admitted that they think that their staff use work time – ie, not lunch, or formal breaks, to look at non-work sites. It identified social networking, web-based email and shopping and holiday sites as the biggest draws. Overall, they estimate the annual cost, per employee to be the region of £1000. According to the report, this costs UK businesses £10.6 billion (yes billion) a year in lost productivity.
Firstly of all, do they really expect us to believe that if there was a complete embargo on ‘non work related websites’ that we’d be saving the economy getting on for £11 billion? This assumes that these employees wouldn’t be doing other ‘wasteful’ things with their time if they weren’t surfing the web – like reading a newspaper or doing su-doku, or otherwise expanding their knowledge.
Secondly, they seem to have concluded that any serendipitous use of the internet is wasted time. What about all that information that has been both consciously and sub-consciously absorbed during this browsing experience? I wonder if they’ve quantified the times when some apparently useless nugget of information has been stored in the sub-concious and then used at some later date to contribute to the well being of the person (e.g. some health information), or maybe even applied to the workplace in a way that has improved productivity?
I’m saddened that a respected industry body such as the CBI should publish such report like this that draws some very debatable conclusions on a potentially flawed hypothesis that serendipitous use of the web is bad for business. Maybe they’d have us bring the workhouse back?
I just hope that managers will not use this report as further ammunition to restrict workers from using the web for anything other than browsing their own company’s web site. Let’s not apply 19th century working practices to 21st century workers!
The IDeA have published a report on the Community of Practice ‘Facilitator’s Workshop’ I organised for them on 27th April. The purpose of the workshop was to bring together the various facilitators of the on-line communities supported on the IDeA CoP platform, to learn from their experiences in facilitating communities of practice across local government, and in response to issues raised by the facilitators through their own dedicated CoP, namely:
how can I keep momentum going?
who can I turn to for support?
will my opinions be seen as ‘novice’ compared to others in the community?
Community adviser and activist Ed Mitchell spoke on ‘Nurturing
communities from networks: the gritty bits’. There was also a session
from Hilary Messeter from the National College for School Leadership
(NCSL).
As with many of these type of events, the coming together and sharing of knowledge can be a therapeutic process, i.e. the realisation that you’re not alone and that someone else has the same concerns and issues as yourself, and better still, finding someone who has solved the issue you’ve been worrying about.
One particularly encouraging piece of information that emerged from the workshop was that most of the CoP’s across local government have a 10% contribution rate, which is well beyond the ’1% rule’.
“We’re trying to sell two very ambitious concepts with this [IDeA CoP] platform.
Firstly, we are asking people to tear down silos and start working
together and sharing our knowledge – something that is an anathema to
some elements of local government culture. Secondly, we are asking them
to do so using the web, with blogs, wikis and forums!â€
It was apparent to me that there is a close relationship between effective CoPs and effective facilitators – i.e. you can’t have one without the other.
The Cabinet Office have commissioned a report – The Power of Information - from Ed Mayo (chief exec of the
National Consumer Council) and Tom Steinberg (the man behind mySociety and
PledgeBank) to look into the ways government can benefit from user-generated
sites, particularly with a view to creating APIs to allow mash-ups with public
sector data (like the Ordnance Survey). Press announcement here.
Good to see the that the power of Social Media has penetrated to the heart of UK Gov. But can they resist the urge to regulate it?!
As a closet fan of all that is ‘Google’, I was wondering when I should make the final step in my transition from Bloglines to Google Reader. I’ve been using both for some time now, which is bit of a pain when I have to add and categorise a new feed since I end up replicating the process twice. However, I think the recent announcement about Google Gears is the tipping point I needed. So, sadly, it’s goodbye to Bloglines, but loyalty only goes so far.
Basically, Gears is a browser add-on that enables web-based applications to run locally whilst off-line. The product is in Beta at the moment, and only supports the Google Reader (RSS feed aggregator). However, we can expect to see support for Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Google Mail,Google Blogger, and in fact any of their applications where there is value to be gained by working off-line and on-line.
Google – you either love ‘em or hate ‘em it would seem, reading the article from yesterday’s Sunday Times. Google are saying they need more information about us, and their competitors are saying they already have too much. The trigger for this latest pouring of outrage is – apparently – Google’s announcement that they had invested almost $4m in 23andme, a fledgling biotechnology company co-founded by Anne Wojcicki (Sergey Brinn’s significant other half), that is interested in the human genome. Interestingly, ordinary users (and I count myself in that category) are saying very little. I find that the Search engine does what is says on the tin; Google Reader is the best RSS reader, and I make the most of all the other freebies (Notebook, Calendar, Documents, Spreadsheets, desktop toolbar , screen saver, personalised search etc.) that they make available via their web site. Their argument that by getting to know more about me and my search habits will improve the relevance of their search results sounds believable – to me anyway.
However, one interesting quote attributed to Todd Cochrane of Geek News Central, with reference to Google’s pending (?) purchase of Feedburner (a company that tracks subscribers to all kinds of on-line content providers):
"Have people really thought about the ramifications of this? Google will not only know what you search for, what ads you click on, but they will also know exactly what you are subscribed to at a very intimate level…..they are going to know more about some people than their own family members may".
Perhaps it’s the fact that I come from a country that has more CCTV cameras per head of population than any other county in Western Europe (or the world), or my naive belief in the Google motto ‘Don’t do evil‘, but I believe that Google’s ultimate objective is to stay ahead of the game in providing a search service that everyone wants to use because it finds what they are looking for!
The latest McKinsey quarterly report provides results of a survey of 1,700 executives from around the world who were asked about the value that they/their companies had realised from their Web 2.0 deployments.
