McKinsey & Co. has just released its second annual survey on
Web 2.0 usage and satisfaction, "Building the Web 2.0 Enterprise: McKinsey Global Survey
Results." The two big stories from this global survey of almost 2000 executives
are the expanded use of Web 2.0 tools (wikis, blogs, social networking) for
knowledge sharing and collaboration, and the bipolar acceptance and satisfaction
with these tools.
Organizations
report using these tools to manage knowledge (83 percent), foster collaboration
across the company (78 percent), enhance company culture (74 percent), train
(71 percent), and develop products and services (67 percent). No surprises
there. But I am pleasantly surprised--and maybe a little skeptical--about the
reported internal penetration. According to the survey, about one in four employees in these companies now use Web
2.0 tools, with a higher level of usage in companies that integrate the tools
into workflows, launch Web 2.0 along with other initiatives, and get senior
managers to act as role models.
APQC's own research supports at least one of these ideas about
what drives enterprise Web 2.0 usage. Sun Microsystems, one of the
five best-practice organizations that will host site visits in October as part
of APQC's consortium benchmarking study Using
Knowledge: Advances in Expertise Location and Social Networking, reports that 4,000 people across
the organization maintain internal blogs. According to Sun, the most
significant factor behind this widespread adoption was the fact that Jonathan Schwartz,
then CEO, started blogging, becoming the first Fortune 500 CEO to blog on a
very regular basis (you can access his blog here).
Regionally,
the most enthusiastic bloggers are in the developed countries of the Asia-Pacific
region: 48 percent of Asia-Pac respondents thought
blogs were the most important tool. (Who knew?) A year ago, I thought wikis
would be workhorses of Web 2.0, but it seems that the allure of social
networking and blogging is winning out.
Satisfaction is clearly a bipolar syndrome, manifested in two ways.
First, the satisfaction rates are very split--21 percent of respondents are highly
satisfied with Web 2.0 tools, whereas 22 percent are clearly dissatisfied. Satisfaction is also bipolar from a regional
perspective. In the developed countries of the Asia-Pacific region, 40 percent
expressed high satisfaction. However, many fewer respondents reported high
satisfaction in other areas, such as Europe (20 percent), North America (20
percent),
Satisfied companies see no barriers to ever-expanding use. Satisfied respondents also say that business
units, not IT, are driving the selection of Web 2.0 tools. Dissatisfied respondents
report the reverse--IT takes the lead, choosing the tools and then delivering
them to business units.
Satisfied or not, all plan to spend more on Web 2.0. So much for
having to prove a return on investment(!)
The full survey results can be accessed here. You'll have to
complete the McKinsey free registration to access the article, but it is a good
opportunity to sign up for the McKinsey Quarterly Newsletter. No, they didn't pay me to say this, but I
glean a few nuggets from most issues.
It seems like everybody is studying—and talking about—social media these days.
The University of Massachusetts Center for Marketing Research has also published a study on Web 2.0. The study focuses on the Inc. 500 (a list of the fastest-growing private companies in the U.S. compiled by Inc. magazine) and compares the companies’ familiarity with and adoption of various social media tools between 2007 and 2008. You can download an executive summary at http://www.umassd.edu/cmr/studiesresearch/blogstudy5.cfm
While I’m at it, I figured I would provide two other links to interesting Web 2.0-related content. The first is “Social Networking at Ford: Community Is Job One” by Rob Salkowitz at http://www.internetevolution.com/author.asp?section_id=697&doc_id=161514
It’s a good quick-and-dirty case study of what the company is doing in the social networking arena and the value they see in these tools.
The second is “Enterprise 2.0 finds its place in big business” by Linda Tucci at http://searchcio.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid182_gci1317357,00.html
In this article, a senior VP at Wachovia relates how he presented the business case for Web 2.0 at the bank, listing the four main business rationales that drove Wachovia to invest in social media.