Two Heads Are Better Than One: Leveraging Web 2.0 for Business Intelligence

  • Authors:
  • Ravi S. Sharma;Dwight Tan;Winston Cheng

  • Affiliations:
  • Nanyang Technological University, Singapore;Nanyang Technological University, Singapore;Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

  • Venue:
  • International Journal of Systems and Service-Oriented Engineering
  • Year:
  • 2010

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Abstract

This paper examines how Web 2.0 may be used in organizations to support business intelligence activities. Five leading professional services firms in the Energy, IT, software and health industries were used as the field research sites and action research performed on their Web 2.0 tools and environment. Business intelligence was the most significant driver of service value to their clients. From the data, five key findings were observed on the strategic use of Web 2.0 in the leading services firms. Firstly, the firm is aware that social networking tools can improve employees' performance. Secondly, there are more tools for tacit-to-tacit and tacit-to-explicit knowledge transfer than explicit-to-explicit and explicit-to-tacit. Thirdly, the firm has a higher number of tools where knowledge flows within itself and almost none for external knowledge flows. Fourthly, social network is part of normal work responsibilities. Finally, among KM tools that were most recognized as assisting social network use were of the Web 2.0 genre such as wikis, RSS feeds and instant messaging and blogging. The authors show that using Web 2.0 improves social networking and may be linked to a service professional's individual performance.