Jim Groffe, CEO of PBwiki, writes about practical business applications as a path to profit and value for companies building technology tools:

The Web 2.0 ethos of openness and collaboration has the potential to revolutionize business productivity … but until the global recession hit, there was too much money available in time-wasting consumer applications to attract entrepreneurs to practical business applications. But times have changed.

Groff says that collaboration is an increasingly important way to improve overall productivity, and simplify common tasks for knowledge workers. Assembling a project proposal, for example, takes to much time because it relies on inefficient processes, like trading files over email. Here’s evidence of the measurable value from using a wiki instead:

Deloitte Digital…was able to reduce by 90 percent the time required to edit new business plans by switching from…e-mailing Microsoft Word documents as file attachments to…a wiki environment.

And the benefits included improved results as well, according to Peter Williams, CEO of Deloitte Digital:

“We spent more time developing and thinking about the plan, rather than running around like headless chickens dealing with the last-minute mayhem of Word documents with track changes everywhere. The wiki made it really easy. And because it was easy, we were more able to involve people.”

(via elearningpost)