Web 2.0 Meets the Corporate Enterprise: Five Questions to Consider

For most organizations, the cell phone and email are the most common means of communication and information sharing. Yet email stores information in blob form, is mostly unstructured and difficult to rely on as a primary source of easily-accessible data for users across the enterprise.

Conglomerate Proctor & Gamble has nearly 300 internal blogs and wikis. P&G senior management are confident that this investment in the tools will payoff with better collaboration and foster a work environment which is more team-focused. (Source: Baseline)

At the end of the day though, considerations about tools are secondary to prevailing cultural attitudes about ownership of information and the benefits of sharing what I know with others.

Here are a few questions you may want to consider before moving ahead with adoption of enterprise-level social software.

1) What benefits are you hoping to realize from a social media implementation?

5) What do your employees think about these plans? Have they had an opportunity to provide input as to process and tools?

This list just scratches the surface; there are issues and factors unique to each organization's culture which must be taken into account. There is little doubt as to the power of Web 2.0 (or Enterprise 2.0) tools. We often see approaches which are too focused on the 'technology of the month' instead of a thoughtful strategic application of these promising technologies.

A social media approach to the enterprise which is informed by cultural realities about information propriety and aims at understanding (and to the degree possible removing) current barriers stands a much better chance of success.