Comments on: Social software ROI

By: Jordan Frank

Jordan Frank — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 13:52:08 +0000

Reducing search chains (to find experts) and collaboration have tangible benefits, albeit hard ones to quantify in a material manner. A pair of papers in MIT Sloan Management Review confirm the direct tangible problems faced by employees who have a harder time locating an expert or faced by failure of divisions/subsidiaries of a company to collaborate and seek knowledge with other divisions.

See “Collaborating Across Boundaries, Searching People for Answers” (http://traction.tractionsoftware.com/traction/permalink/Blog793)

Per Euan’s point that you bring up, the “I” that you might spend on a social software project is miniscule compared to the benefits that can be unlocked. And, while, trying to unlock those benefits by quantifying storage saving from e-mail may “pay the bill” it will miss the point.

By: Abbe

Abbe — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 22:09:43 +0000

Check out Aberdeen’s recent Sales 2.0 report that looks at the percentage of best-in-class companies using wikis and enterprise 2.0 tools and say those tools contribute to their better numbers. Here’s a blog post on it: http://wikisunleashed.blogspot.com/2008/10/aberdeen-on-sales-20.html

By: Chris Sparshott

Chris Sparshott — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 22:05:45 +0000

Hi Matey, thought I would share this preso with you – talks about RoC ratios as a way of measuring benefit.

http://kiwilight.blogspot.com/2008/10/measuring-success-of-social-networking.html

Cheers
Chris

By: Peter Bray

Peter Bray — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 21:57:00 +0000

Hi Jon

Great post – check out http://www.streamwall.com for a good way to measure success.

Cheers
Peter Bray

By: Markus Köberle

Markus Köberle — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 10:47:43 +0000

Start with pilots at very low cost and low risk. That seems to me the best way to setup the first step. To me this was a key statement at the somesso.

By: Ted Stanton

Ted Stanton — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 20:09:24 +0000

Good summary and I’m finding the same with the customers I speaking with. Glad I’m not the only one

By: Swan

Swan — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 19:08:20 +0000

Perhaps a pseudo-science that helps get us part way to an ROI. eg. Find a way to calculate the value of two people in your organization finding each other when they need to connect and then estimate the additional number of times this would happen with the new system over the old one. Perform the multiplication to estimate ROI.

Also, can we calculate what we might lose by not innovating? What is the difference between where we want our business to go and where we are now? How much of that do we expect to come from innovation? How much does collaboration contribute to innovation? Can we look to the past and determine how much more we made thx to innovations? Would those innovations have been possible without collaboration?

By: Jon Mell

Jon Mell — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 16:35:38 +0000

Thanks Larry – and thanks for your quote which started my train of thought along these lines..!

By: Larry Hawes

Larry Hawes — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 16:31:57 +0000

Thanks the quote, Jon, and I’m glad that you agree! You are absolutely right that ROI can (and should) be positioned as an approval enabler, especially when dealing with well-understood business processes. The hurdle to demonstrating value is certainly lower in that situation. This is great, practical advice that everyone should keep in mind!