Web 2.0 Four Tips for Getting Good ROI from Web 2.0 Projects

As a IT project manager I read alot of professional periodicals. Today I came across this article that seems as if it were written for me. CIO magazine ( along with Information Weekly, is a good source of information for current or aspiring IT managers who may want to end at the C Level of management) published an article giving details about Four Tips for Getting Good ROI from Web 2.0 Projects.

The article discusses the fact that recent research performed by the Burton Group shows that there is still a bit of a struggle for business leaders to implement an effective strategy when trying to introduce Web 2.0 technologies and measuring some type of Return on Investment.

CIO magazine also interviewed Jeff Stafford the manager of capital investment and innovation strategy for Embarq, a high-speed internet and phone company which "had some early success making Web 2.0 part of its overall innovation strategy to improve idea generation and ultimately create new products. " During the interview Mr. Stafford detailed four keys to implementing Web 2.0 technologies and how to get some sort of measure.

1.Target Your Inefficient Communications:

Embarq has communicated both internally and externally using staple enterprise technologies: phone, teleconference, and, of course, e-mail. There's an inherent slowness to those interactions. What we needed was a place to collaborate in a central location, where all the information could be visible.

Stafford decided to implement the Jive Social Business Software, an application suite that includes blogs, wikis and discussion forums.

2. Pick a Software Delivery Model:

Many social software vendors run on a purely software-as-a-service (SaaS) based model, where the data is hosted offsite and users access applications using a web-browser.

Embarq, however, knew that its people wanted to talk about product development and other R&D related projects over a social software platform, so it wanted to own the servers housing the data.

Jive includes profiles for each user to upload his or her picture and list expertise. Each site you set up within Jive has the capability for blogs, wikis and discussion forums on certain topics.

3.Executive Buy-In Is a Must:

Social technologies in the consumer space thrive because end-users adopt them through "viral channels," enterprise social software needs some top-down encouragement in order to drive adoption. This doesn't mean you need to mandate that people use the technology, but if the boss mentions that the technology may help bolster a project, the chances for success improve

4.Measuring Your Web 2.0 Success: Time is Money:

It's often difficult to assign hard ROI numbers to social software projects, since it doesn't replace any existing infrastructure but compliments or improves it. As a result, Stafford says you should measure how much faster the platform allows you to accomplish tasks and collaborate on key projects.