One of the blogs that I read regularly is Alan Mathers' (no relation) e-Government@Large. It is always filled with pretty unique insights and thoughtful points of view, but this time one of his posts really caught my attention.
Web 2.0 applications continue to draw huge crowds for social networking, (MySpace & Facebook) sharing videos and photos, (Flickr and YouTube) professional networking,(LinkedIn) information sharing, (Blogs and Wiki's) and even to create alternate lives. (Second Life)
What Alan touched on, very well I thought, was that there are "armies" of people out there who work at updating these applications regularly. Adding links, information and posting items to be a part of their own news-feed.
Yet the corporate world seems to have missed the boat on this issue altogether. Alan looked at how Governments could tap into this emerging technological area to get greater communication and access to information.
It was a fascinating insight into how Governments could transform the way they deal with information and other issues and it got me thinking.... How could consultancies use these programs?
There are lots of opportunities, either for their own companies, or as a value added area they could add to their service delivery portfolios.
Networks
LinkedIn came first to mind, and for a number of reasons.
One of the initial thing that I thought of was supplying clients with CV's. In the early stages of most engagements there is a need to prove the calibre of your people. CV's are supplied of senior people showing their capabilities etc.
If all the firms CV's were on LinkedIn then an entire step in the initial get-to-know-you phase would be a lot easier.
Clients and prospects could peruse through the CV's at their leisure, going into whatever level of detail they wanted to. Also... Consultants would have their client recommendations there online for prospects to see readily, and to reference check as they wanted to.
Imagine the possibilities of being able to point your prospects to links on the Web, where they could see the capabilities of your people as well as the references they have.
A second area where LinkedIn would provide value is through the creation of closed networking groups, just for the company employees.
Consultants, developers and sales people could sift through the company "register", checking the backgrounds of their work mates, and creating connections to whomever they pleased. Giving them the ability to call on expertise and knowledge from within the company extremely easily.
This is, of course, only the tip of the iceburg. Job ads for internal roles could be placed easily, and through HR making their own connections they could easily be bought to the attention of the right group of people within the company.
The possibilities are staggering! Particularly when you work for one of the majors like IBM, Accenture or Sapient.
Information sharing
iGoogle is a great product, and one that could be very useful for corporate communications. Blogs for company announcements, press releases and to notify of policy changes could be tied to a consultants iGoogle home page or even through the Google reader, to make sure that people had ready access to relevant information for their roles.
Departmental blogs could built and used to communicate information, or just to generate interest in an initiative or project within the company. A classic would be regular updates on project progress, and on new developments in the sales pipeline.
For growing consultancies departmental blogging could help alleviate the anxiety people feel once the company gets too big for them to get the sort of information from water-cooler conversations that used to tell them what was going on in the company.
Wiki-world
Wiki's are another area of potential for all companies, but particularly for consultancies. The first thought was as a place were the corporate "track record" could be held.
A set of confidential (not for public view) entries talking "frankly" about all of the clients that the company has had. What they bought, who the buyers were, what the benefits were to them, why they stopped buying (maybe) and links to relevent information about that company or industry.
Not quite the CRM vision, but a very informative tool for sales, consultants and developers alike. Being able to research the company history with a client, the wins and losses, and relevent information about the sector and company could be the difference between an engagement or a passing interest only.
Wiki's have a lot of additional potential. But the basis of them, as with other Web 2.0 tools, would be that they were edited and updated by anyone in the organization who wanted to.
Some other wiki potential areas:
- updates of policies, documents and communications
- definitions of internal terms and service delivery capabilities
- help files for consulting areas, software and technological systems (useful for external clients also)
- references to the latest company thinking or standpoints on subject matter related themes
- Bios of important figures in the history of the company.
The fact that almost zero consultants are using YouTube as a marketing platform amazes me. Loading videos of conferences, training sessions, marketing spots and ads, or even of TV spots, would make them available for permalinks to the companies own site - or to be searched by the public.
There is a lot more to this, and Alan has revisited the theme a number of times on e-Government@Large.
But, even though the potential for consultancies to benefit from these applications is pretty big, there would be equally large-scale opportunities for our clients.
Some companies provide Google Analytics consulting, Ajax programming and a few other Web 2.0 ish services. But in general it seems to be a sparsely populated market space, just waiting to be created. And here is the rest of it.
