The Presto Vivace blog called out the 7/27 Information Week article Business Value Of Web 2.0 Tools Hard To Measure yesterday. The post and article cited a Forrester Group survey of enterprise IT managers that showed lack of hard ROI for Web 2.0 technologies.
I expand a bit here on my comment on the Presto Vivace blog.
I am not surprised by the study. First off, Web 2.0 itself is an
amorphous concept – many could and do debate what it is and which
technologies it encompasses. Second, it is just technology while it is
the application of technology that is important and can lead to
quantifiable benefits. I bet if they were to look into specific areas
where Web 2.o technologies are well-integrated into applications that
support lines of business, they would see a return. Finally, it is true
that many of the benefits that Web 2.0 delivers – improved
collaboration, organization and discoverability of info – are soft and
hard to measure.
This reminded me of my days selling Lotus Notes groupware solutions in the 90’s, and sales force automation systems before that. Although most of the benefits were considered to be soft, many studies documented improvements and ROI over the long term for organizations that did better jobs of implementing these systems, and managing knowledge and info.
When it comes to blogging, it would seem on the face that it is a big time sink and thus a productivity drain, at least for the short term. Looking outside the sphere of IT and technology projects, there are some hard returns that come with communicating more effectively and openly as some forward looking executives and organizations are starting to do using blogging and related technologies. See my post From Madmen to PR’s Holy Grail, and of course Robert Scoble and Shel Israel’s popular book Naked Conversations.
(I am of course not saying that blogging in and of itself is a panacea or recipe for effective PR, just that it is increasingly a tool that can be part of the communications mix).
Also, I touched upon some related areas in my January post Google and Web 2.0 Productivity Dividends.
