A new Forrester report states that Instant Messenging (IM) is by far the most valuable ‘web 2.0’ tool for enterprises:
“Web 2.0 tools and technologies are the latest in a long line of technologies that have taken root with consumers
who then smuggle them into the business world. IM is one notable example. To this point, the Web
2.0 tools that we inquired about fall well short of the value that businesspeople associate with IM.
Thirty-seven percent of respondents reported substantial business value from IM, compared with
an average of just 16% for the other Web 2.0 tools.”
The report was compiled based on feedback from 275 IT decision-makers. Other than IM, the report found that RSS and podcasting showed “the highest average business value”, while social networking and blogging showed the lowest. RSS is mostly being used in enterprises for corporate communications or content aggregation, while only one in three Forrester respondents uses RSS for external marketing purposes.
Source: Forrester
Forrester concluded that those firms with the largest number of tools deployed saw the best value, although no “killer combination” of tools has emerged. Perhaps this is because the big players, like Google and Microsoft, have yet to come up with effective Web Office suites.
In terms of measuring the success of web 2.0 tools, Forrester states that most firms use traditional value measurement techniques like ROI and total cost of ownership (TCO). The most popular benefits cited by IT leaders are ‘soft’ benefits like business efficiency and competitive advantage. All of this indicates that Web 2.0 is still very difficult to measure.
