technologies?

Big pharmaceutical company: “Too early to tell, way too early”;

Global chemicals company: “ Suspicious of trade-offs between ‘fun’ and ‘productivity’”;

National real-estate and mortgage company: “Who the hell knows?”;

Global IT company: “People seem to like them, but I don’t know the real impact”; and

Large financial services company:

“We are hopeful.”

˲ • How would you quantify the impact in knowledge management, rapid application development, customer relationship management, collaboration, communication, innovation and training?

Big pharmaceutical company. “ Collaboration and communication is where the action is; this is the real impact we’re seeing at this point; plus, there’s a lot of user acceptance of wikis, blogs, and social networks; we’re getting more formal with KM where wikis and blogs are being used to codify information and vet decisions; only doing a little with RAD and mashups, but that will come in time; same with CRM, where we plan to use the tools to better communicate with customers and suppliers; wikis are emerging as training tools; not too much yet with innovation; a little worried about crowdsourcing outside the firewall”;

Global chemicals company. “Wikis and blogs have changed the way we communicate: they’re easy and fast, and everyone can participate; KM is fast following improved communications and collaboration; the IT team is crazy about mashups; they are able to build applications very quickly for the business, so I’d say RAD has improved; CRM with external customers and suppliers is behind the other applications; we’re a little leery of working outside the firewall with these tools; training is a natural; we’re using wikis, blogs, and podcasts for training, with good results; still nothing with virtual worlds or crowdsourcing, a little too ‘out there’ for us”;

National real estate and mortgage
company. “We’re all over these tools
for data and content management;
RSS filters are used internally and
externally, and we tag everything for
better search and access; communi-
cation and collaboration are obvious
beneficiaries of the tool use; CRM
is our next application, where RSS
and other content will be provided
to our customers; virtual worlds are
not there for us yet, but we like wi-
kis, blogs, and podcasts for training;
they are cheaper and faster than hir-
ing a training company; innovation is
happening inside the company with
crowdsourcing and blogs”;

Table 1. Web 2.0 technology deployment.

Which Web 2.0 technologies have you deployed?

(Please select all that apply.) Wikis Internal employee blogs External customer blogs rSS filters Folksonomies/ content management mashups virtual worlds Internal crowdsourcing External crowdsourcing Internal social networks External social networks None other (please specify):

Response
Percent
Response
Total
62.2% 61
48.0% 47

20.4%

20

32.7% 21.4%

32 21

11.2% 1.0% 6.1%

11

1

6

4.1%

4

25.5%

25

17.3%

17

22.4% 5.1%

22 5

Table 2. overall expectations.

how would you rate your expectations about the contribution that Web 2.0 technologies would make to productivity and management? high medium low None at all

Response
Percent
Response
Total
23.7% 18
55.3% 42
21.1% 16
0% 0