Enterprise 2.0

Social Networking Interpretation, Discussion and Implications of Findings Enterprise 2.0 innovations should be seen as an interim technology, and it is reasonable to suggest that the next generation of post-mobile technologies will revolutionize communications even further. There is a clear, linear progression in communication technology, and eventually Enterprise 2.0 technologies will become obsolete as well. Given the current pace of innovation in computing, a reasonable timeframe for this evolution is within the next 5-10 years.

Until then, Enterprise 2.0 technologies will continue their own evolution, and will continue to contribute to helping businesses communicate with internal and external customers in new ways. Discussion The interviews with industry experts highlight the current state of Enterprise 2.0. There is a continuum of maturity that exist on three distinct levels: unified communication, enterprise content management, and social network & community (Philip 2010).

A fully mature Enterprise 2.0 model is one that includes unified communications, live collaboration, rating and folksonomy, forum, blog/microblog, podcasting and video sharing, as well as project-centric collaboration and wiki. Kuettner (2013, p.334) notes that "it is still very difficult to quantify actual benefits," highlighting the lack of a direct link between Enterprise 2.0 and performance. More attention, therefore, needs to be paid to understanding the links between these technologies and platforms and the business strategy that they are intended to support.

As an example, companies will need to find ways to measure the impact of a tweet on the success of an event, and evaluate that against the cost of that tweet. "Even more so than in ERP projects," Kuettner concedes, there is "a lack of measurability in Enterprise 2.0." It is easy to measure social media outputs, numbers of followers and those sorts of things, but these measures still need to be linked to the organization's more traditional performance measures.

Despite the lack of such clear links, Enterprise 2.0 has become successful, and crossed over a number of barriers to maturity. Enterprise 2.0 is now broadly accepted in managerial circles, and enterprise has increasingly invested in 2.0 applications. Organizations are following their users, who have adopted many Enterprise 2.0 applications eagerly (Hugi 2010). Factors Responsible for Adoption The research, and interviews, highlight several key factors that are driving the adoption of Enterprise 2.0 by businesses. First is the sense that every business must participate in Enterprise 2.0.

There are many businesses who can be characterized as novices with this technology. They may have a few tools, but they do not use them much, and these firms have generally adopted a wait-and-see approach to new innovations (Bernoff & Li 2008; Kinsman 2011; Marchand 2000). Fast-adopting industries have a comprehensive, mature version of Enterprise 2.0 adoption, with multiple tools and heavy usage (Perrigot, Kacker, Basset & Cliquet 2012). These companies will often seek to integrate their Enterprise 2.0 tools not only with each other, but within the context of a broader marketing and communications strategy.

One factor that drives higher levels of adoption is company size. The incremental cost of intensive Enterprise 2.0 participation is spread out over greater sales, so larger company have an advantage in terms of economies of scale in implementing new technologies. Another factor is the type of organization. Some industries in general place more emphasis on Enterprise 2.0, and firms will often respond to the moves that their competitors make with regards to this sort of marketing investment.

Companies that have historically been more experienced with new technologies are more apt to be further along in their Enterprise 2.0 adoption. Senior management support has also been cited by many respondents as a critical success factor in the adoption of Enterprise 2.0. There are different forms of support, in particular in the way that managers allocate organizational resources, but one form of support that arose a few times from respondents was that it was important.