Papers & Articles
03/07/2008 | How A Wiki Can Boost Your Business
Clear communication is vital in any organisation. In the case of a commercial organisation, employees whose feedback is encouraged are more motivated, resulting in improved productivity.
Web 2.0 applications offer the management team the means to communicate with employees via a wiki, a collection of web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content. Fellow managers can contribute in order that each aspect of a particular message is explained and understood. Customers can also be invited to view and contribute to a wiki.
A number of delegates who recently attended Enterprise 2.0 in Boston, U.S.A. shared their experiences of using a wiki within their organisations. Rob Carter, CIO at FedEx, explained how the global courier giant embraces Web 2.0 technology to help customers track progress of their packages. Moving away from internet browser-based communications, FedEx has developed FedEx QuickShip service, which delivers real time information to the customer's desktop via Microsoft Outlook.
Sean Dennehy, chief of the CIA's Intellipedia Development, gave attendees an inside look at one of America's highest security undertakings, the Central Intelligence Agency's Intellipedia project. Using blogs, wikis, e-mails, and social bookmarking software has helped to get important information into the hands of the people who could put it to good use in national security issues.
Linda Skrocki, a senior engineering program manager with the multinational IT systems provider, Sun Microsystems, gave some solid tips in how to succeed with a company wiki. Skrocki gave examples of how trusting your contributors to post freely, while following guidelines, benefitted the entire organisation.
There are many uses for wikis. Training and knowledge management are fairly obvious advantages. Incorporating customer contact is being recognised as a further benefit. Many wikis also include internal company blogs. Important components of a wiki's success include how it is designed, built and managed. The input of a professional web marketing company will prove invaluable in setting up your organisation's wiki.
back to main newsThe number of web requests we have has increased since the launch of the newly developed and formatted web site. Our traffic has improved dramatically and the statistics we are now getting are helping us to hone and re-word the web site to improve this even further.
