Business technology execs at the Enterprise 2.0 conference
in Boston June 18-21 to explore integrating Web 2.0 technologies into
their enterprises. A.G. Lafley, CEO of Procter & Gamble, is pushing
improved internal and external collaboration primarily to develop new
products faster. Leading this effort is Joe Schueller, innovation
manager in P&G's Global Business Services. Schueller makes an
interesting observation that email is the biggest barrier to employee
use of more interactive and effective tools.

As a sender of an e-mail, I control the agenda of everyone around me.
E-mailers decide who has permission to read a message, and the Reply To
All button ensures that peripheral participants will be prompted long
after they have lost all interest. Blogs, in contrast, beg for comments
from those most interested.

P&G provides a study of how Enterprise 2.0
will take shape given the scope of its project and the way it draws on
tools from startups as well as big-name vendors.

Video from conference -  Open/Download MP4

PPT from conference -  Open/Download PPT

 

Gordon: What kinds of tools and applications are they using?

Mike: Starting in 2005, P&G began a Microsoft-centric collaboration initiative, with

• 
  instant messaging,
  
• 
  unified communications, and
  
• 
  presence;
  
• 
  Web conferencing; and
  
• 
  content management and collaboration. 

About 80,000 employees use Microsoft IM, and 20,000 have moved to
Outlook. P&G has a few SharePoint sites running, and the major
rollout started in August.

Now moving to offer employees a more diverse toolset.

Gordon: Are they doing any blogging?

Mike: Movable Type blogging software, which employees have used to create hundreds of blogs, including ones

• 
  by the VP of design
• 
  by the public relations department on how to discuss company issues externally; and
  
• 
  by Schueller, read mostly by IT folks.
  

Gordon: How about social networking?

Mike: Plans to launch social networking intended to make it easier to find people with needed expertise.

Gordon: Have they tried any of the integrated
platforms? For example, the first one that comes to my mind is
Microsoft's Community Server - a product that integrates many of the
Web 2.0 based tools into a single platform.

Mike: Companies are finding monolithic solutions/platforms from
big players like Microsoft and IBM inadequate, even as they add support
for blogs, wikis, and calendar sharing, instead their focus is on
modular, flexible solutions and even the openness to IT also needs to
learn how to incorporate tools employees bring in themselves, he says.