The
professional services firm and the Economist Intelligence Unit
surveyed 472 executives around the world. Almost 70% said they
believe that Web 2.0 tools will help employees to work more
efficiently. Seventy-five percent said that Web 2.0 tools will
foster innovation within their businesses and 86% see them
improving knowledge sharing.
More than half of respondents (52%) said they use blogs daily,
47% said they use social or professional networking sites daily and
44% said that they use wikis daily. The results do not distinguish
contributions to enterprise blogs and wikis from visits to popular
blogs and Wikipedia . Podcasts were used daily by 37% of
respondents, RSS feeds by 41%.
However, while these benefits are encouraging some companies to
embrace Web 2.0, for others, potential risks are hindering their
uptake.
Over half of respondents said that protecting and securing
critical data is the chief barrier to adoption, while a third admit
that not knowing how to measure the impact of the technologies is
the most serious challenge to implementing them more broadly across
their company. Almost half (45%) cited a fundamental lack of
understanding about how Web 2.0 relates to their business.
Implementation of Web 2.0 governance structures varies by
industry with some industries indicating they are "already there"
and others planning to make significant changes in the next two
years. Many respondents indicated that their organisations have not
yet addressed the risks of Web 2.0 in any systematic way.
Fewer than half say they are currently putting in place
governance programs that will guard data from unauthorised external
access and only 28% have included Web 2.0 tools in their risk
management processes.
Across industries, IT/Technology companies and Financial
Services companies show most awareness of the risks of Web 2.0 and
have taken steps to head them off, 52% and 60% respectively have
policies in place to protect digital content from unauthorised
access, with the remainder indicating they will do so within two
years.
Just over a third of respondents in the entertainment, media,
publishing and communications sectors currently have policies in
place, despite digitalisation being most advanced within these
sectors. Industries such as automotive and construction and real
estate are further ahead with 40% and 50% respectively having these
policies in place.
KPMG's Chairman of Technology, Crispin O'Brien, said: "It could
be that technology and financial services companies are more
attuned to these risks due to the less tangible nature of the
products they deal in, compared with construction or automotive
industries."
