Synergise IT

While the world is talking about how to implement Enterprise 2.0 and how to get there, there are many organisations have relatively stable Enterprise 2.0 systems in place. However, alot of these applications have been created on an ad-hoc basis and generally via a bottom up approach. Tech savvy employees have the capability to introduce such systems within a relatively short amount of time and its sprouting all across the organisation.

I have seen in one organisation, there are multiple wikis and blog platforms running and the worst thing is that the technologies used are all different. It ranges from MediaWiki, WordPress MU, Confluence and Mindtouch. With such disparate knowledge repositories around, the organisation is not achieving the expected benefits outside of the teams using it. With the walls of the organisation coming down with Enterprise 2.0, having multiple repositories is not a good thing. In one extreme case, there was multiple document managers running and some employees are asked to upload/update their work in at least three different of such systems! That is an absolute waste of time, money and effort.

Enterprise 2.0 applications like wiki, document managers, social networking platform and document collaboration platforms are only good in an organisation if everyone is accessing one place for all their transactions. What an organisation wants is for everyone to contribute to one knowledge marketplace and transact on one platform. After all, one of the aims of Enterprise 2.0 is to get employees out of their only little team silos and work as an organisation towards a common goal.

With much of Enterprise 2.0 coming from the bottom up approach, the senior management must now recognise that Enterprise 2.0 is a upcoming suite of applications entering via their backdoor. Its either they let it be and in future spend hundreds of thousands to consolidate and migrate all these knowledge into one place and suffer some levels of mutiny from employees who are passionate about their own individual platform or get it right early and once and for all and save the hassle in future.