IT StrategyRaj Sheelvant’s blog on harnessing Information Technology to create and sustain competitive advantage for the businesses

Can businesses leverage Web 2.0?

Conventional wisdom says any organization can become Web 2.0 enabled; it’s a matter of deploying Web 2.0 applications like blogs, wikis, and Ajax applications. But that’s just a coat of paint - to be really Web 2.0-enabled requires a complete change of business model. This according to Tim O’ Reilly, CEO of O’Reilly Media in his interview to Information Week in advance of Web 2.0 Expo starting April 22^nd.

Traditional organizations have an extensive customer database but that sits behind the firewall. Currently these organizations look at this data as their proprietary information. But Web 2.0 successes at Google, eBay and Amazon are due to the fact that they are willing to share that information with the customers to improve their experience. That is the big difference. Traditional organizations need a new mindset. They need to collaborate with the customers to co-create and co-innovate. They need to allow customers to build a sense of belonging - allow them to vent out their frustration and come up with a probable solution. That will allow the marketing department to have the pulse on the ‘real’ business need of the customer.

Well, changing corporate culture to enable collaboration with customers is easier said than done. Lots of organizations have difficulty in making collaboration work within the organization itself. The fact the Enterprise application implementation is so cumbersome because different departments need to cooperate and collaborate is a clear indication that the organization structure is extremely rigid.

Any Enterprise wide Web 2.0 implementation is going to be difficult. IT department by itself can’t lead the implementation on its own. That’s why you see hodge-podge implementation of Web 2.0 technologies within different organizations with no clear or identifiable ROI. Hence Enterprise implementation of Web 2.0 needs to be formed at the company executives’ level. Web 2.0 implementation needs to be integrated into the business strategy and needs the buy in from all the individual departments.

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Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008 at 3:58 pm and is filed under Web 2.0, Marketing Strategy, Business Strategy, IT Strategy, IT Management, Collaboration. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.