The old way wasn’t working for Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein (DrKW), the Europe-based investment banking division of Dresdner Bank. As the company expanded into new markets and became more decentralized, it felt its project management software and e-mail couldn’t meet its communication and organizational needs. That’s when it decided to take a chance on a relatively new technology known as a wiki, a type of Web site that allows users to add and edit content in real time.
DrKW started its first wiki in 1997, well before anyone was using the term in a corporate setting. Since then the company has found many uses for the application. Its design team uses it to track the completion of its Web-based projects in real time. And a wing of the bank’s equity financing team uses a wiki to supplement e-mail, eliminating the need to sift through inboxes.
