Toby Ward recently sent me a copy of the Intranet Global Survey that I participated in. Toby is the CEO of Prescient Digital Media. The headlight quote was encouraging, “Employees want to work for progressive and innovative organizations, and expect 2.0 environments from employers of choice.” The study included input from 561 organizations of all sizes from across the globe and the results reveal rapid adoption of social media on the corporate intranet in the past year.
The breakdown of specific types of social media on intranets include: 47% have wikis (10% have no plans or interest), 45% have blogs (11% have no plans or interest, 46% have discussion forums (9% have no plans or interest), 37% have RSS (12% have no plans or interest), 23% have podcasts (30% have no plans or interest), and 19% have social networking (20% with no plans or interest. I am not sure which is better the high numbers who have already adopted or the low numbers with no plans or interests. The study concluded that an organization without Intranet 2.0 tools, or plans to use them, risks being out-flanked by their competition.
Many of these initiatives have been accomplished on low budgets, 46% have spent $10,000 or less, 35% have spent between $10,000 and $100,00; and 19% have spent $100,000 or more. However, remember these numbers come from organizations of all sizes. The sample found that 61% have more than 1,000 employees; 32% have 6,000 or more employees; 39% have less than 1000 employees. So many of the large organizations have still managed to implement with a small financial investment to date.
Of those organizations that have not implemented Intranet 2.0 tools, lack of a business case (30%), executive support (33%), and IT support (31%) and internal policy concerns (27%) are the top barriers. The study adds that business cases do not need to always have hard ROI and other dollar-driven targets, but a clear need must be established.
The use of intranet 2.0 is relatively new as only 15% of the firm shave had them over 2 years and 355 have had them less than a year. The study concluded that few organizations have had these tools long enough to perfect their use or achieve critical-mass acceptance. At the same time, firms have spent relatively little time evaluating tools as almost half have spent than less that three months at this tasks.
The major uses cases for intranet 2.0 tool include: employee collaboration (77%), knowledge management (71%) employee engagement (53%), and executive communications (35%). This is useful information for those who see enterprise 2.0, in part, as a realization of the promise of knowledge management and as adding better collaboration to a firm’s capabilities. On the other end, cost control (14%) and cost savings (19%) are a low priority for most organizations in adopting intranet 2.0 capabilities.
Despite the common wisdom that executive involvement greatly aids adoption, the study found relatively little executive involvement as 57% of executives have never contributed content or have done so infrequently (less than once per month) and only 11% of organizations have executives that contribute content on a daily basis.
There is much more and you should look at the report. You can get a free summary or purchase all the details. I think the findings are very supportive of the concept of enterprise 2.0 as a reality and, at the same time. Show some of the things that need to be done to increased adoption.
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