Collaborate To Perform – Web 2.0 with a purpose
There has been a lot of hype and hence confusion around Web 2.0 and its benefits. Since there is no clear definition of web 2.0, it means different things to different people. It can be described as a collection of technologies, tools and concepts that takes the traditional World Wide Web (Web 1.0) to the next level of innovation.
Web 2.0 which is focused on enhancing user experience includes:
- Technologies: Ajax, web services, java scripts and flash
- Tools/applications: Blog, wiki, mashup, widget, forum, RSS & tagging
- Concepts: Collaboration, Social networking & social bookmarking
- Result: Write-enabled Internet / Intranet and hence dynamic user contributed content; Rich user experience
While web 2.0 has been adopted by public websites extensively, it has just started invading the enterprises fast in the form of Enterprise 2.0. A recent Yankee Group survey discovered that 86% of non-IT workers are using at least one consumer web 2.0 tool in the office. As younger workforce that is well versed with consumer 2.0 tools enters the corporate world, access to 2.0 technologies has become only more of a given.
Collaboration being the most important component of 2.0, the impact of it in enterprises is prominent and its benefits are visible immediately. The ease of data creation, modification or deletion by individual team members opens up unlimited collaboration possibilities in an enterprise. The teams can share information, analyze, plan action and execute strategies which finally drive up the overall business performance.
Web 2.0 + BI
One of the most significant applications of 2.0 collaboration tools in the enterprise is
to use them in combination with traditional business intelligence for
driving operational excellence. This revolutionary
combination is changing the effectiveness and hence the future of BI
itself. The BI component of the combined solution highlights where the
problem is and the collaboration component helps to tackle the same
faster and better. Thus, the 2.0 tools multiply the value of BI based
performance management solutions and accelerate the ROI dramatically.
These tools serve as quick and effective delivery vehicle for the
static data stuck in silos.
Key benefits of Web 2.0 enabled BI solution are:
- Easy adoption: Even non-technical users can interact with reporting and analysis tools comfortably.
- User contribution: Use of wikis, blogs, forums and other collaborative workspaces will allow users to instantly publish and share reports and other critical business content.
- Problem solving: Business performance trends can be published to the teams and they can be invited to generate ideas for tackling negative trends and learn from the positive trends.
- Real-time performance mgmt: RSS feeds serve as an additional information source in reports and analyses, providing an endless stream of real-time information.
- Worldwide (web) ‘collaboration’: Combining performance data with various external sources by using mashups will expand the depth and breadth of the corporate information that already exists. Mashups can also be utilized to enable rapid creation of composite BI services and data visualization
- Data discovery: Use of ‘tagging’ techniques will make reporting content available and easy to search & find through ‘everyday’ web sites such as Yahoo and Google. This will facilitate collaboration with customers and external business partners.
- System development : Development of BI environments using advanced Internet frameworks such as widgets will accelerate deployment, improve system performance, enhance robustness of the user interface, increase speed of data delivery, and ease integration with other business applications.
CollabWorks platform from Metrica provides this perfect marriage between 2.0 and traditional BI technologies. It extends the ease of use and interactivity of next generation web collaboration technologies to the complex, static BI systems. It is highly suitable for environments such as contact centers, back-office service delivery centers and field operations where the business performance is driven by 100s of employees.
CollabWorks makes collaborative contribution a part of employees’ daily work life by becoming the preferred ‘workplace’ for them. It makes usage of performance data a pervasive business practice by leveraging 2.0 in a task specific manner.
