The Next Enterprise Web

What is the difference between an enterprise and another company, a non-enterprise? You can characterize this by the size of revenue, profit or the company itself. Very large for any of these three would be an enterprise.

These methods of classification are, however, not what this weblog is about. This weblog is about those companies that are very big and can be called enterprises, but act small and very unlike traditional enterprises. They do this by utilizing technology, especially the internet and it’s new techniques to transform their company into something which can be agile like a midsize operation or even a start-up.

When we think of a company making $16 billion dollars revenue a year, we think of a large company, with thousands of people, a lot of red tape, and, usually, an enterprise that cannot get things done on a smaller scale. Like a huge tanker ship, once the company goes in a certain direction it is not possible for it to turn or even easily go a slighty other way.

Most enterprises are like that and you know when you work at one, when:

• … every decision, no matter how small, needs a meeting
• … the company has more managers than qualified personnel
• … everything seems to take an infinite amount of time to get done
• … the company buys products (like software) which costs more than $100.000 but is completely worthless in your eyes

and so on.

While it might not be possible to remove these kinds of things that make your days feel boring and unproductive, it is at least possible to remove the perception they are going on (for the outside and for the inside) and later on move to remove them completely.

As I am a tech guy, I really hate the above even more than other people usually do. And technically, it becomes clear, that fixing the above points can be done by using online software. Reviewing the examples:

• meetings can be handled with chats, collaboration white boards and, simply, email; no more wasting time if people first collaborate on the meeting topic online
• managers are the people who want to have meetings in the first place; it they can work more efficient by not having them, they have more time to manage and not so many are needed
• as decision-making and collaboration move online, all involved persons can access the entire collaboration process and, by using the workflow used by the software, expedite the processes
• with application service providers and online software you pay for usuage and if you don’t like it, you can cancel it and move to another system; open standards help companies doing this faster and faster

This weblog will focus on all the above and more, especially as these changes move across larger companies and enterprises. At Componence we try to work like this and consult our clients to work like this using our and other software. We eat our own dogfood, making working here quite different from other companies.