Web 2.0: McKinsey Global Survey 2009

“Successful companies not only tightly integrate Web 2.0 technologies with the work flows of their employees but also create a ‘networked company,’ linking themselves with customers and suppliers through the use of Web 2.0 tools” reports McKinsey survey on Web 2.0.

This survey of 2009 demonstrated the importance of Web 2.0 use in the organizations, in customer relationships and in transactions with suppliers, partners, and outside experts.

About 69 percent of the respondents of this survey reported that their companies have successfully translated the benefits of web technologies in to measurable business gains most likely due to the extended company’s pool of knowledge, effective participation in projects and idea sharing, improved access to knowledge experts, and reduced costs of communications, travel, and operations.

Offering great scope and stability to organizations, Web 2.0 technologies increased organization and consumer interaction and decreased the time of marketing the products, resulting in improved customer satisfaction along with employee satisfaction. By means of effective transformation of knowledge via automatic information feeds such as RSS or microblogs 2.0, wikis and social networking, companies improved 10% of the operational costs and 30 % increase in the speed of tapping outside experts.

Companies achieved these measurable business benefits with the utilization of new technologies offering innovative products and services, effective marketing, better access to knowledge, lower cost of doing business, and higher revenues.

In this survey irrespective of the type of industry, executives from all the companies using Web 2.0 technologies reported greater benefits. In comparison, the respondents at high-technology companies reported measurable benefits than others followed by those at companies offering business, legal, and professional services. Relatively, the companies crossing $1 billion business are more likely to be benefited than smaller or consumer companies.

Figure: % of respondents within each region gaining at least 1 measurable benefit from using Web 2.0 technologies1

In relating to the region, the respondents from North America and India claimed reaping benefits from their companies’ use of Web 2.0. While the respondents from North America and China reported highest customer benefits. In China and India, the reported benefits of web 2.0 were mainly due to the interactions with customers and partners.

Although companies are utilizing web 2.0, adoption of committed users is difficult to some extent. Thus for successful adoption, the utilization of web tools should be integrated into the users work flow, and implicate approaches other than the traditional financial or performance incentives. As per the respondents, the informal incentives incorporating the Web culture, such as ratings by peers and online recognition of status, have been most effective in encouraging Web 2.0 adoption.

Moreover the focused management also improves the web 2.0 performance, particularly the three aspects of management were very critical, which include lack of internal barriers to Web 2.0, a culture favoring open collaboration and early adoption of Web 2.0 technologies.

Lastly the survey results suggested that as the satisfaction with Web 2.0 is high among all the respondents, Web 2.0 has great scope to raise as more companies attempt to capture more benefits.