Can Crappy Intranets Be Saved By Web 2.0 and Social Software?
We saw a communications firm, which had 60 separate offices, use social networking technologies from Microsoft SharePoint and Newsgator (which provides RSS) to build an internal social network where users shared links and connected with others in the company who shared their same expertise.
One of my favorites occurred at a very large enterprise, Bell Canada, where the head of IT told used blogs to streamline project management.
But it's clear some hurdles remain. While building a useful corporate intranet starts with wiki technology and other social software, all these IT leaders were emphatic in their interviews with CIO that just buying social software and Web 2.0 won't necessarily translate into success. They say you must be very adept at feeding information in there automatically rather than waiting for users to do it themselves.
As a result, he said social software and Web 2.0 technologies must integrate with exisiting systems to give you a baseline of useful information. You don't only want to feed in basic biographical information about employees like their contact info; you also need relevant documents and pieces of content to give the intranet some life and give employees something to discuss.
What's great about all these case studies is that, though IT may have had to do a little work up front, they essentially liberated users to populate the corporate intranet with relevant information while freeing IT to work on more "mission critical" projects. In that case, a harmonious balance between the realities of an IT project list (they always have too much to do) and immediate needs of users can be achieved.
At least, in theory.

