Wiki + Blog + Mashup = Productivity

Optimize magazine has an article by Howard Greenstein titled “Web 2.0 Meets the Enterprise”.  It is a must read for CIOs and enterprise managers that have the unenviable task of squeezing more quality work out of a static or shrinking work force. It dovetails nicely with some recent posts I’ve written on the impact of wikis on productivity and email ( 1 2 3 ):

Perhaps the most convincing reason to get on board with new Web technologies is this: IT executives who missed or ignored such disruptive technologies as the wildfire spread of mobile devices are now scrambling as handheld synchronization and mobile-application capabilities become standard business requirements. Unlike last time, when IT was forced to adapt as new technologies came in through the back door, CIOs can now bring the benefits of Web 2.0 technologies in through the front door, leaping to the front of the innovation curve.

I suspect Web 2.0 technologies will continue to find the backdoor more accessible than the front. The article focuses on wikis, blogging, and the ‘mashing up’ of different technologies to create specific solutions for various scenarios. You can read the article for the blogging and mashup topics, but these are a few examples of successful Wiki implementations cited by the article:

…use the wiki to post requirements, files, and questions, build meeting agendas, track meeting notes, attach relevant documents,…. members see and answer that content.…done in shared space….no one had to receive or send an E-mail message…anyone could simply view the wiki and get a clear understanding of the project's status—without using corporate storage systems or programming resources.

…sales team uses a wiki to log daily lead counts, post partnership information, and read documents posted by product management and marketing….. use the wiki to publish position papers, marketing collateral, messaging, and scripts for customer inquiries…...uses the wiki to track projects…. shared with select customers

…generate proposals for customers … import Word documents… allowing a salesperson to decide which pages to display…. share all or part of the document with a customer…. salesperson E-mails a link for the wiki to the customer…. comment or question is attached to the wiki page…. software sends an RSS or E-mail message to the salesperson….. view the proposal in a dashboard interface with all of the history….. answer questions and have a dialogue with customers right in the sales document.

…"FYI" E-mail messages are nothing but distractions…. "occupational spam" … . often isn't useful to the organization as a whole….  business wiki gathers and stores content that corporate users can view whenever they're ready….. lowering the frequency of distracting, spur-of-the-moment E-mail and instant messages…. maximizes distribution and participation.

I’m sure it is just an oversight on the part of the author, but everything in this article speaks to enterprise productivity gains, but he never mentions that word. This goes directly to the comment I made a few posts back regarding the disconnect between folks trying to deal with productivity stagnation and the folks marketing Web 2.0 solutions.

You guys really need to compare notes.