McKinsey recently issued a new report in the line of what they already published these last months. It’s about the benefits enterprises can take from enterprise 2.0. After having focused on what makes successs possible, McKinsey is now starting to evaluate concrete beenetids. As often, I’d say that those who are closely following the “E2.0 state of the art” won’t learn anyting new here but will the the confirmatin of what manyt experts already wrote on this subject. The main interest, once again, is the McKinsey label that will help internal evangelists to convince skeptical managers.
I let you read the report, there is nothing to add to it. Just let me bring a few insights.
– some enterprises see significant benefits. That’s an essential point without which all our arguments are pointless.
– enteprises that see the more tangible benefits are located…in India, then in North América, Europe and Asia being left behind. I don’t know India at all but this ranking is the evidence that culture really matters in adoption and change processes.
– the most obvious benefits are about access to knowledge and experts. This seems to be consistent with process socialization and problem solving as a routine
– benefits are more easy to emerge in companies that generate more $ 1 billion revenue. Certainly because large businesses are those that developed the more structural inertial throughout decades, so the place where there are the most wasted or unemployed resources. Another explaination coild be that large businesses often explore new things long before small and medium ones, so they begin to see benefits first.
– in order to see benefits, social media have to be fully integrated into worklows and people’s daily activities. I would not like to be seen as endlessly repeating the same things, but I’m convincend that this point is largely neglected. Enterprise 2.0 is not about bringing conversations into the digital workplace without any link with daily tasks and activities but to focus on these activities. Implementing such a project without asking the question of rethinking what people are doing in their daily routine, to bring some existing information flows to new medias is a guarantee of failure (or of no success). Neglecting this point causes situations when community managers push information, hoping someone will read it, waiting for (rare) reactions to come, wondering why conversations don’t start. This is very far away employees’ actual situation, who have nothing to do with conversational communities that don’t help them in their day to day job. 75% companies who see tangible benefits integrated social medias in people’s “day to day work”. Don’t try to find anywhere else what is the difference between success and failure (or maybe we don’t have the same defintion for success).
– making executive use social media tools is essential. Logical since we’re talkong about daily business tools. There are fields where community managers can’t replace those who have an operational legitimacy. If have more insights on this subject, which I’ll share in a future post.
– 2.0 projects go beyond the enterprise’s walls. There is no internal or external logic anymore but a an “extended company” scope from the start : employees, partners, clients are concerned. That confirms the social CRM trend and a new scope for stakeholders.
– to my surprise, innovation is not one the domains where significant benefits were seen, even if it has been one the enterprise 2.0 discourse’s cornerstone from the start. Do we have to make the conclusion that the 2.0 approach is not relevant to innovation, that open innovation logics are very hard to implement because of their internal impact ? Maybe non-specialized approaches, tools and adoption methodologies are not enough ?
– this report left me unsatisfied. Ok there are tangible benefits, but we may expect to know more, how do they materialize, how they are measured…
To be continued…
