We work with many companies to provide their employees, customers and partners with Web 2.0 tools. SharePoint 2010 and many of the add-ins that work with it allow organizations to provide wikis, blogs, rating, and tagging and features that emulate Facebook and Twitter. These tools can be provided behind the firewall (employees only), through partner or customer portals (to link with select outside parties), or through the internet.
One question that often comes up with our clients and prospects is: how do we cost-justify an investment in social networking tools? A recent McKinsey Quarterly article, "The Rise of the Netowrked Enterprise: Web 2.0 Finds its Payday," provides some good answers. Note: you need to register to read the article.
The authors surveyed 3,429 executives and asked both about the use of Web 2.0 tools and their organization's performance. Here are the key findings from the survey:
- Companies are using social networking tools more when compared to previous surveys and two-thirds plan to invest in these tools in the near future.
- Over 90% of firms report measurable benefits from using these tools with increasing speed of access to knowledge the most reported benefit.
- About 80% of the companies were just getting started with Web 2.0 tools and reported only modest benefits.
- They split the remaining 20% of the companies into--internally networked (13%), externally networked (5%) and fully networked (3%). These groups reported significant business benefits from their investments in social networking and other Web 2.0 tools.
- Fully and externally networked companies reported market share gains compared to their competitors.
- The heavier users also reported higher profit margins.
These findings should provide IT managers with rationale for investing in social networking tools for employees, partners and customers. In our experience, customer and partner-facing tools are often easier to sell internally.
As you're looking at these tools, consider SharePoint 2010. There are some neat new Web 2.0 features build-in. If you'd like to learn more, check out our upcoming webinar on April 20: How to Enable 'Social' in your SharePoint Communities. If you'd like to learn how other IT managers are using social networking, you might want to attend the April 14 Boston SIM panel.
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