Web office overview
Rob Boothby has written yet another excellent paper on the subject of web office, which is his term for a collection of web based tools which are rapidly disrupting established business systems for knowledge workers, key elements of the toolkit include not surprisingly blogs, wikis, social networking, search, podcasting/event recording, web email, instant messaging, presence and IP telephony. Rod concludes the paper with 5 compelling reasons why business needs to take this seriously:
There are five reasons why any senior executive needs to start thinking about Web Office now:
- Web Office technology will make partnering and out-sourcing more efficient by creating a platform that can seamlessly support virtual ad-hoc teams. Thus, it will quickly reduce your costs.
- If you have any competitors using Web Office technology, they are going to have a significant productivity lead over you. Web Office will be as big and important as email, and you wouldn’t imagine running a business today without email.
- Your new hires are already using this technology. The MBA class of 2006 has lived and breathed the web since they were in high school. If you don’t provide company endorsed solutions, they will end up using tools that are available on the open Internet until you do.
- Most importantly, Web Office will help you to increase the pace of innovation within your organization. As I explained in my last paper “Turning Knowledge Workers into Innovation Creators”, constant innovation is the only business strategy capable of producing a stream of above average profits. To achieve constant innovation, senior executives need to bring everyone into the effort. Web Office is the ideal tool to help achieve that goal.
- Web Office is cheap. You will get a lot of bang for your buck.
