Intranet 2.0: Empowering Enterprises adopt web 2.0 technologies, all behind their firewall

Two years ago Dion Hinchcliffe asked the question “Can web 2.0 be adapted to the Enterprise”. Andrew McAfee of Harvard Business school had then just coined the term Enterprise 2.0 which revolved around enabling ad-hoc collaboration via freeform, emergent and social software for potential outcomes. Today, new age technologies are being crafted for enterprise use and are being adopted by businesses to increase productivity and improve collaboration amongst employees. Enterprise 2.0 technologies enable Collaboration using wikis, blogs, tagging systems, RSS, discussion forums, instant messaging, search and more making the collective intelligence of an organization accessible increasing innovation, innovation, productivity and agility. At the core, these technologies aim at interconnecting employees with other employees, partners, customers and business knowledge; gradually becoming mission critical to the success of the businesses. So, How do I use these Enterprise 2.0 technologies to help my business? Andrew McAfee lists 8 ways as to how these infrastructures can be used to benefit businesses:

1. For Collaborative Document production - Wikis
2. To build an encyclopedia – Knowledge Repositories
3. As an All-purpose teamware
4. As a war room for fast-changing situations
5. For Knowledge Broadcast - Blogs
6. For broadcast search
7. For crowdsourcing
8. To express collective judgment

Together these technologies can be best applied and consumed in the company intranet that can behave as a unified platform for employees to work together, exchange knowledge and gain from other’s experiences. Enter Intranet 2.0. Intranets for long have been document centric. But documents and content are useless without knowing who created it, why was it created and how was it used. Employees need to be able to search for people, expertise, previously created information easily to increase productivity. Intranets 2.0 enable an open environment that encourages user participation and empowers employees to help create and organize the information they need, effectively. Cyn.in adapts these Web 2.0 philosophies and concepts to create an offering focusing on enterprise requirements and benefit areas. Cyn.in becomes an extension of your workplace, making it easy for people to connect, share ideas, store project information, review documents, discuss and make quick decisions. I'd love to know how your business is using an Enterprise 2.0 technology to benefit your business productivity.