MyCIMA

More than enthusiasm for web 2.0

Posted: Sunday 04 October 2009 by Louise Ross
Replies : 6
Category: Strategic management / economics
Keywords: collaboration, Enterprise 2.0, social media, Web 2.0
Louise Ross's picture

A few months, and a lot of desk research ago I began to get a bit ticked off with articles or websites or conferences that promised to discuss the return on investment of organisations' use of web 2.0. They just did not deliver.

I finally identified the problem - there aren't enough accountants involved! Marketing, IT and social media experts have claimed this space, and they do not define ROI as we accountants understand the term. So while we have plenty of enthusiasm for web 2.0 (and why not? some of the examples are pretty inspiring) there is also little concrete evidence on costs and benefits to help organisations considering web 2.0.

It seemed timely to do two things. First, to issue a heads-up to accountants and management that finance should be involved at the pre-planning stages of a web 2.0 project. After all, most of the costs of any project or product are committed when it is designed.

And second, to share my desk research, and collect together cases of web 2.0 implementations to give others an idea of potential benefits and pitfalls. Management need to be reassured that implementing web 2.0 doesn't have to be a blind leap of faith. Given evidence about others' experiences, and guidance on how to deal with rather unpredictable outcomes, it's perfectly possible to construct a business case for web 2.0 as it is for any other investment.

My report "Beyond enthusiasm" is published tomorrow - yay! - at www.cimaglobal.com/web2.0. Check it out to find out what was the most successful viral advert of all time; how a robotics manufacturer found a whole new market for its product; and how a software developer benefitted from hundreds of thousands of hours of free development.

I’d love to hear what you think - especially if you have web 2.0 experiences to share.

With accountants taking notice - is Web 2.0 past the hype cycle?

Posted by Deirdre Molloy on Sunday 04 October 2009 22:53

Hi Louise,

I'd be interested to hear yours and others thoughts as to why accountants and finance professionals haven't previously got so involved in "claiming" innovative web, communications and data initiatives - or have they?

I agree that ROI is finally becoming a big issue in the Web 2.0 space that's been emerging over the last five years; which is why I organised the UK's first ever event on it in February 2008: Chinwag Live: Measuring Social Media

This event was packed out with those folks you mention as having "claimed" this space: new media, marketing and IT people. I saw the attendee list, and there were no accountants :-) It spawned a free, open source monthly meet-up called Measurementcamp, the next one of which is this week Wed 6th October. Why don't you (and anyone else reading in the London area) come along? It would be great to get some input from finance folks... http://measurementcamp.wikidot.com/events

My other question is: are we confusing Web 2.0 and social media here; or was the social media wave just the fluffy, marketing-dominated forerunner of a deeper, more widespread change for businesses and organisations that Tim O'Reilly first outlined in 2005 in his seminal Web 2.0 article?

Best, Deirdre
(CIMAsphere community manager)

Yes but

Posted by Dennis Howlett on Monday 05 October 2009 15:50

@louise: I was sent the paper by Annette in Media. I've had a reasonable skim and read through. Unfortunately I find that it muddles a few concepts up but then that's nothing new. It is inevitable that accountants would ask the ROI question. It is one I asked 4 years ago when I first got into these media and was roundly rebuffed by those at the cutting edge of this stuff. At the time, I helped Charlene Li, then of Forrester to frame questions around this.

Looking back, it was a pretty crude exercise. Today, there are metrics that can be applied to outward facing projects - ie those connected to sales/marketing. These are reasonably well understood so building an ROI case (if one is needed) wouldn't be that difficult.

However the internal - enterprise 2.0 - metrics are far less well understood. What's more, E2.0 is a completely different discipline. I argue that what we should be calling E2.0 is something different other than McAfee's largely failed term. I see it as collaboration but I sure as heck don't want to put a 2.00 moniker on it. We never got past 1.0 whatever that was supposed to be.

The reason you don't see case studies is because those organizations that are making the best use see no reason to talk about what they're doing. It certainly isn't a lack of information around what works and what doesn't. And it's all going to get worse.

Agencies and consultants who haven't worked this out are experimenting with positioning that I believe will come bite them. They're attempting to apply social science they don't understand to problems they're inventing out of thin air. That's a recipe for disaster. I continue to be skeptical and often take pops at the concepts despite being involved with some of the largest communities on the world.

"Beyond Enthusiasm" report

Posted by Louise Ross on Monday 12 October 2009 13:52

@dennis: Thanks for your comments. Dennis (aka Accman) is probably the best known accountant with an interest in web 2.0. We met briefly at Somesso event earlier this year.

I'm sort of skeptical too, hence the title "Beyond Enthusiasm" but I'm also easily swayed ... I'd be interested to know why you were "rebuffed", Dennis - because no-one was yet ready to hear the accountant's perspective or because you were talking a different language - defining ROI differently?

Re metrics, I provide a couple of links in the report to CIMA and CMA guidance about measuring marketing and internet-based marketing projects which seem relevant. I tended to find more case studies about success than failure (no surprise) but my issue was that even if the organisation was happy to trumpet how innovative it was, it didn't publish the hard data I was looking for. I guess such data is all locked within organisational boundaries - either the company itself or the consultants it used. I appreciate those who have implemented projects have plenty of data.

"recipe for disaster" is a tempting comment to leave dangling - anyone?

Vote on the best business use of Web 2.0

Posted by Deirdre Molloy on Tuesday 06 October 2009 14:56

We're running a poll, as of today, that asks: What is the best business use for Web 2.0 technologies?

Is it creating operational efficiencies, conducting effective R&D, marketing, or none of the above?

You can vote here:
http://community.cimaglobal.com/polls/what-best-business-use-web-20-technologies

Or should we focus here more specifically on Enterprise 2.0 as Dennis suggests, collaborative practices and software systems that override silo-based inefficiencies and inertia within and between organisations..?

Deirdre

Success and failure

Posted by Dennis Howlett on Thursday 08 October 2009 15:38
@louise: you'll be hard pressed to hear people talk about failure but they are out there. Especially in the area of community. The only success I've seen that really captured my attention was the US Dept of Defense with Intellipedia. But here's the kicker - it was the realization after 9/11 that they were walking like a pantomime horse that stung them into action. Also - remember that when people talk about success stories, you never get to hear about the pain they went through. Booz Allen had a terrible time to kick off with for instance. The Dell story gets trotted out with boring regularity but when you look, it wasn't even a blip on the petty cash line. And when you compare against average sales per employee, it turns out the revenue they did get wasn't that spectacular.

Web 2.0

Posted by Ryan Scaife on Monday 02 August 2010 16:56

Hi Louise,

I'm a management accountant working as Finance Manager for a digital marketing agency (Epiphany Solutions in Leeds). The main problem I can see here is trying to distinguish ROI on Social Media and Web2.0 is a grey area. These new areas of discipline are typically geared towards improving brand recognition and consumer relationships which is difficult to put a tangible measure on - especially the effect on the bottom line. Nevertheless, it's is imperative to constantly adapt with new technologies - for example, utilising facebook, twitter, linkedin etc to appeal to new and existing clients and continually manage that retention is the #1 focus of Social Media benefits to businesses.