Social media can revolutionise business practices

The book, From Crowd to Community, suggests that Web 2.0 technologies have made more traditional management structures obsolete for today's knowledge-based industries.

The publication says that a structure approach is key to success during and after the implementation of any social platform and that just implementing a strategy does not make it successful, while these changes in business are timely.

21st-century knowledge

"For too long we have been trying to manage 21st-century knowledge-based organisations using outdated industrial-age structures.

"The good news is that we now have the collaboration tools to change this and our younger workers have been brought up on these almost from the cradle," said Declan Kavanagh, managing director, Sogeti Ireland.

The publication suggests there is an enormous pool of untapped talent also in the private and public sectors that can be unleashed by new Web 2.0 tools.

Replacing departments with communities

The book also implies that teams and departments will be replaced by communities. "In contrast to employees that only participate in carefully top-down controlled processes according to job profiles and fixed workflows, Enterprise 2.0 employees must be permitted to arrive at usable results in a more organic, bottom-up manner."

Sogeti, a member of the Capgemini Group, is a global provider of local professional services with more than 20,000 staff in Europe, Asia and the USA.