Dion Hinchcliffe has thrown down the gauntlet. Over the next few weeks, he is going to be writing a series of real life business use cases for Enterprise Web 2.0 technologies.

I’m really looking forward to his articles. I am also going to try and join in. I’ll tag all related articles with the tag “Real+Enterprise+Web+2.0+Scenarios”. If you are a blogger reading this, please add your ideas to the list. Throw up a post with an idea about how blogs, wikis, content aggregations systems can be used to solve a real business problem.

And when you do, think about the inevitable blending of social media and Service Orientated Architecture.

Here’s my first very mundane, run of the mill example:

People Pages in a Consulting Firm

Consultants are always applying for new jobs. They apply as a team, but never the less, they always need a customized resume at the ready.

The business problem for a manager who is putting together a proposal for a prospective client is simply finding fellow consultants with the right skills sets for a given job.

If you have 100,000 people, this isn’t a trivial task. Even if you have 500 people, no one knows what every one of their colleagues brings to the table in terms of skills.

The solution is a simple “People Page”. I have learnt that senior management usually thinks “blogs” are for kids, so it’s better to call them “Pages”. Each “People Page” is simply a blog used to describe the skills of a person in the company. Well, it’s a traditional blog used a certain way with a few simple hacks. Here is a list of the novel features:

First, information is not presented in reverse chronological order. Instead, the “Summary” section goes first. You write post with the summary of your skills - the elevator pitch - and then you select the category “Summary”. With some simple tagging in the “People Page” template, you can have “Summary” followed by “Current Projects” followed by “Prior Experience” and “Education”.

It is amazing to me that when we hire people; we feel that it is important to look at their resumes. Yet, once they are in the door, they are pigeon-holed into their new job, and we throw their resumes away. And yet it would be really useful to know what skills and experiences your colleagues bring to the table.

Second, data is captured in a structured format. On each people page, users fill out their contact information in a structured blogging type of entry tool. This approach captures their contact information in a real vCard or hCard. We can even make it work with Live-Clip.

Third, it’s easy to tie the people page into all other blogs. So when you post an article in a “Project Page” blog, you get a bi-line that links back to your people page.

Fourth, it is easy to link the People Pages into legacy systems. This is the integration of social media and SOA. And it is really simple. First, blogging tools like MovableType and Wordpress have plugins that help you add a feature that shows if someone is online (on AIM or Skype). Read something on a Project Page, click on the bi line, go to the People Page and see if you can ask the author a question right then and there.

For a less razzle-dazzle example, I have been thinking about how to tie the People Pages into our HR scheduling application. Now, I can both find out what a person knows and has experience with, and if they can be available to help me with a project.

Fifth, the pages are searchable.

This last point means that People Pages can solve the immediate business problem. Say I am writing a proposal for a Credit Derivatives Pricer model validation project. (That’s the kind of thing I really do). I can punch in “Credit Derivatives” into our internal search engine, filtering only on People Pages, and get a list of all the people who know enough to help me with the proposal and with the project if we win the work. Well, actually, that’s when we win the work. We increase our chances of winning dramatically when we can demonstrate to the client that we have put together exactly the right team for them.

And we can do that using internal enterprise blogs and a search engine.

Thusly and therefore, QED, …er…internal enterprise blogs can help solve the real business problems faced by a manager in a consulting company trying to staff a project.