Increased Focus, Knowledge Retention

Building social media functionality into an ERP platform will also help ensure that employees using Web 2.0 tools like instant messaging or wikis are not leaving their working context and are likely to remain more productive. Harder to quantify but also important is the degree to which the workforce enjoys the tool they are using. Intuitive communication tools like enterprise 2.0 can cause workers to more closely follow updates about what is going on within the company — even when they are not at the office.

This dynamic can cut the other way as well. Intuitive enterprise 2.0 tools can make it more likely that workers will share information with others, increasing the degree of intellectual capital entering an ERP solution.

Within much of the developed world, the number of people of working age is actually decreasing. This trend is hitting some industries — including utilities, process manufacturing and other complex engineering-intensive fields — harder than others. Enterprise 2.0 ERP may be one of the best tools to capture and retain the knowledge of senior, expert, professionals and technicians — intellectual capital that would otherwise have been lost.

Wikis for Lean