Awareness Research on Enterprise 2.0 Adoption
by Bill Ives
I received a useful report from Awareness on adoption trends for web 2.0 tools within the enterprise. In an email survey they found that 54% of organizations with over 500 employees are using web 2.0 tools and 74% of those with under 500 employees. The majority of these use a both internal and external facing web tools. Blogs are the most used web 2.0 technology (87%) followed by communities, wikis, RSS feeds, and social networking. The vast majority (96%) report that the use of web 2.0 tools haven been successful. The biggest obstacle to deploying web 2.0 tools in the limited availability of internal resources to support their deployment. Security is also a concern. The results were obtained by Equation research in the fourth quarter of 2007.
The recent date might explain why these results are a bit higher than some others such as reported in Some Initial Web 2.0 Enterprise Research. However, the desire for web 2.0 in the enterprise has been building for some time. A University of Massachusetts survey done in late 2006 found that a majority of business respondents (66%) felt that social media were important to the firm’s business strategy. Another 2006 study by Watson Wyatt found that nearly 50% of the employee population prefers – and expects – collaborative and interactive methods of communication fund on the consumer web.
I was especially interested in how these tools were helping organizations both inside and outside the enterprise. Here is a summary:
Positive impacts for internal facing social media
Improving communication and collaboration – 91%
Finding experts inside the company – 81%
Improving knowledge management – 78%
Positive impacts for external facing social media
Increasing customer engagement – 68%
Increasing brand awareness & loyalty – 64%
Providing market research – 58%
Generating revenue – 39%
The Awareness research found that going forward 28% of organizations with over 500 employees have budgets greater than $50,000 for web 2.0 tools or social media. The top tools planned are blogs and wikis (56%) but many are also planning to deploy online communities.
Eric Schurr, VP of Marketing and Direct sales at Awareness told me, “It’s clear from the report that two trends exist. First, enterprises are very interested in taking advantage of social media for business purposes. Second, many of them are stalled by two factors: concerns about security, moderation, and control; and the fact that they have limited resources and understanding to drive a successful Web 2.0 project. As you know at Awareness, we are putting a lot of energy into addressing both of the concerns. We’ve built a platform that specifically addresses the issues of security, moderation, and control, and because we do the work and host the communities for people we can help them overcome the obstacles of not having enough resources.”
Thanks to Awareness for sharing this work. Future studies should include a new category of web 2.0 tool, workspace or collaborative platforms, such as what Awareness offers. You can download the report from their web site.
, I am working with a number of firms to help them take these extra steps that you list and others. If firms are not committed to taking these extra steps with blog, it will have limited effectiveness and I think they will be disappointed in the end – unless, of course, they are only doing the blog to simply say they have one and not to reach an audience. Bill
