I’ve been busy converting early access trial users to customers for my e2.0 client, Itensil. I feel sort of like a 21st century Lewis and Clark, where I’m charting new territory. A lot of the discussion to date about adoption in the enterprise has made liberal use of the future tense. The conversation usually involves how web 2.0 “will” be adopted and how, sometimes when. I’d like to bring that discussion into the present tense. The good news is the feedback we’re getting is validating what those of us who’ve been evangelizing in the sector have been predicting.
The vast majority of early access trial users at Itensil have been user departments, not IT departments. We ask them to describe their basic problem they’re trying to solve. These are some of their answers:
- XYZ has offices spread all over the world that often work together. We need a new toolset to make this interaction simpler
- We have a number of undocumented and unmanaged processes within the organization which require input from various teams. These cross multiple areas of the company from marketing to HR.
- We have multi-state annual direct-mail campaign stretching over 5 months.
- Manage a team of 25 shift and day working staff across multiple sites. Struggle with effort coordination and communication.
- We are a small but rapidly growing third party warehousing/logistics company with 5 facilities around the globe and roughly 50 internal employees and 700 external customer employees. Being a third party warehouse/logistics company involves a huge degree of collaboration as we not only have to work together as a team within (across our 5 separate facilities) but we are acting as a direct partner of our customer’s business and need to tightly collaborate with them (roughly 35 brands) scheduling their execution. The big challenge we experience is having a group of people scattered physically around the world (easily 30 locations) be able to efficiently work together with maximum visibility so that everyone always knows what’s going on.
Although it’s still early days for Itensil, we’ve received hundreds of inquiries along these lines. Itensil is a small start-up that hasn’t really started a broad marketing initiative. We’ve tapped into user demand from the blogosphere. I’m sure if Itensil is experiencing this level of interest, other firms in the category must be swamped with the here and now of enterprise 2.0 adoption. So, perhaps, the revolution has turned into an expedition for those of us in the rivers and valleys of delivering on the promise of web 2.0 in the enterprise.
Feel free to share your experiences.
