Matt Moore has written a whitepaper on justifying your knowledge management programme. To quote: If you are running a knowledge management programme then you know that you do good work. Whether it is involves communities of practice, learning from projects and operational activities, or documenting organisation knowledge in a myriad ...
Blog category: Metrics & ROI
November 4, 2008 by James Robertson
Justifying your knowledge management programme
Tags: business case, Knowledge management, metrics
October 30, 2008 by James Robertson
Intranets: measuring before and after
Intranets aren't owed a living, and we must demonstrate their value if we're to get the resources and support we need. As the technology landscape changes, this will become more important, not less. We've been talking about this for a while now. I recently argued that "minutes saved" on the ...
October 22, 2008 by James Robertson
The importance of metrics
Allen Huish has written a timely post about the importance of metrics. To quote: I met up with some intranet managers the other day and there was a lot of talk of metrics. How many page views, how many users, who had clicked what and so on. The conversation swiftly turned ...
Tags: Intranets, metrics, statistics, usage
October 21, 2008 by James Robertson
25 reasons why saving time on your intranet is a bad metric
We've all heard the argument: if we can save staff 2 minutes a day looking for information on the intranet, we can multiply this out by the number of staff and the days in the year to get a huge productivity benefit. This can then be used to justify the ...
Tags: findability, Intranets, metrics, time saving, usability
October 10, 2008 by James Robertson
The business case for Enterprise 2.0
Oscar Berg has written about the business case for Enterprise 2.0. To quote: Travel (and environmental) costs will decrease as a lot of face-to-face meetings can be replaced with virtual meetings Efficiency and productivity will increase as we get faster access to the information we need to carry out our tasks ...
Tags: business case, Enterprise 2.0
November 29, 2007 by James Robertson
CMS business case
Seth Gottlieb has written a post on creating a CMS business case. To quote: In my opinion, the business case discussion should be around the content itself - not the technology used to manage it. This is a difficult conversation to have for a number of reasons. First of all, ...
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February 15, 2007 by James Robertson
Panorama across the desert (IV)
Panorama across the desert (IV) On the last day of my San Diego trip I drove up to Joshua Tree National Park. While the cloudy weather didn't help the photos, the landscape was truly extraordinary. Like nothing I've seen before...
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January 9, 2007 by James Robertson
Managers say the majority of information obtained for their work is useless
An Accenture study reports on staff's ability to find useful information. To quote: Half (51 percent) of customer service managers -- more than managers in any other area -- are likely to encounter challenges when trying to obtain information about other parts of the company. In addition, 40 percent of ...
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June 26, 2006 by James Robertson
The return on investment (ROI) for personas
Usability News has posted an extract from The Persona Lifecycle: Keeping People in Mind throughout Product Design on ROI for personas. To quote: One of the most common questions we are asked about personas is if they actually work. And if they do, how can you tell if they were ...
April 4, 2006 by James Robertson
Measure twice, cut once: content management metrics
Brian Manning & Caleb Brown have written an article that discusses common content management metrics. To quote: Often, when companies choose to implement a content management (CM) strategy they do so in an attempt to alleviate the operational inefficiencies associated with maintaining multiple content repositories. The documents in these repositories ...
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November 14, 2004 by James Robertson
Case Study: intranets, usability, and value
Jeff Veen presents a mock case-study exploring the redesign of an intranet, and the ROI it may deliver. To quote: As Tracy sits down to write a project plan, she considers the problems the company is facing: Almost all the information employees are looking for exists somewhere, but nobody can ...
July 22, 2004 by James Robertson
ROI is not a silver bullet
Scott Hirsch has written an article on the ROI of user experience. To quote: For years now, the "ROI of User Experience" has been sought as a means to justify larger corporate investments in web design. Although ROI methodology can be a useful tool for prioritizing possible web development projects, ...
June 29, 2004 by James Robertson
The tao of ROI
Sandra Winters has written an article on the issues surrounding ROI. To quote: ROI analysis is an important part of your due diligence for new IT investment. How could you even think of participating in a new business venture or investing in another company without it? While ROI analysis is ...
May 8, 2004 by James Robertson
Identifying the components of your ROI
Ann Rockley has written an article on determining CMS ROI. To quote: Identifying Return on Investment (ROI) for your content management business case begins with a thorough analysis. This article reviews the information you need to gather to identify ROI for an effective business case for content management.
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April 3, 2004 by James Robertson
The high cost of not finding information
Susan Feldman reports on IDC research into the high cost of not finding information. To quote: Knowledge workers spend from 15% to 35% of their time searching for information. Searchers are successful in finding what they seek 50% of the time or less, according to both Web search engines and our ...
July 31, 2003 by James Robertson
K-Log productivity: Time to find and availability
John Robb has written another weblog entry on K-log metrics (k-logs are "knowledge weblogs"). This one focuses on the time taken to find information in an organisation. To quote: An oft quoted statistic is that "knowledge workers spend 35% of their productive time searching for information, while 40% of the ...
July 30, 2003 by James Robertson
Report Review: Nielsen/Norman Group’s Usability Return on Investment
Peter Merholz and Scott Hirsch have written a review of the Nielsen/Norman Group's report on usability return on investment (ROI). To quote: Although it does make a reasonable anecdotal case for investing in usability, the report methodology is so fundamentally flawed that any financial analyst worth her salt would ...
July 30, 2003 by James Robertson
ROI calculations: K-Logs vs. traditional Intranet Portals
John Robb has written a weblog entry that compares the ROI of enterprise portals and k-logs (k-logs are weblogs used inside an organisation). In it, he finds that k-logs provide similar benefits at a fraction of the cost. What is also very interesting are the ROI figures he has obtained ...
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June 28, 2003 by James Robertson
ROI of Usability: A Collection of Links
Rashmi Sinha has posted an excellent set of links to articles on the ROI of usability. To quote: It is hard to directly estimate the economic impact of usability. However, it is important to do so, both at the macro and the micro level. Products with bad usability can have ...
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June 7, 2003 by James Robertson
New mailing list: Aifia-metrics
A new mailing list has been established: Aifia-metrics, with the goal of establishing common metrics for assessing information-rich sites. To quote: This list is for discussions of evaluation methods and metrics for information-rich websites and non web-based applications. The goal of the project is described below. Please join in the ...
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April 17, 2003 by James Robertson
Popular paper: metrics for KM & CM
I received an e-mail today from ITpapers.com, informing that I have won some sort of monthly prize for having written one of their most-downloaded articles. Apparently, the article Metrics for knowledge management and content management is much in demand. I'll even get a plaque mailed to me listing my ...
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March 18, 2003 by James Robertson
Jakob Nielsen defends productivity gains
Jakob Nielsen's latest Alertbox goes to some length to defend his popularisation of productivity gains as a basis for calculating ROI. To quote: Usability improvements can save time-on-task, but critics argue that this is not the same as saving money. Others worry that productivity gains cause unemployment. Neither is correct: ...
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March 17, 2003 by James Robertson
Projects that defy ROI
David Joachim has written about projects that have hard to quantify ROI figures. To quote: It's one thing for your bosses to insist on a business justification for IT projects that clearly cut costs or generate revenue. But what about those initiatives that do neither? We're alluding to technologies that wouldn't ...
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March 6, 2003 by James Robertson
Time saved: a misleading justification for KM
Dr. Michael Koenig has written a brief article about the dangers in justifying KM efforts on the basis of time saved. To quote: The problem with time saving as a justification is that even if the user's time is saved by a KM system, management probably won't see any difference ...
February 25, 2003 by James Robertson
The “proof” for usability’s ROI: statistics and examples
The Usability Professionals' Association (UPA) has released a summary article outlining the ROI for usability. This brings together a lot of interesting stats and resources into the one location. To quote: Because there have been many well-documented examples of cost savings with usability engineering, sound statistics can be applied generally ...
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February 7, 2003 by James Robertson
Intuiative ranking
There is an excellent discussion on drop.org about ways of implementing intuiative ranking of web pages. To quote: From Amazon to Google to Daypop, there is a demand for accurately ranked content. As a result, most Content Management Solutions include a ranking feature. Typically, this involves a call to action for ...
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February 3, 2003 by James Robertson
KM Column: Metrics for knowledge management & content management
My latest KM Column article has just been uploaded to the website: Metrics for knowledge management and content management Metrics are an effective way of setting project targets, assessing success, and tracking ongoing health. This article summarises a range of practical KM and CM-related metrics. Feedback or comments are always welcome...
January 31, 2003 by James Robertson
HR self-service success
Sarah Fister Gale has written a feature exploring three stories of HR self-service success, broken into a number of parts: Introduction"HR fights back against paperwork, expense, and errors by instituting employee and manager self-service systems. Most employees love it immediately. It might take the managers a little longer to adjust. ...
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January 23, 2003 by James Robertson
Intranet cost-benefits
Martin White has written a blog entry on the difficulty of calculating intranet cost-benefits. To quote: The minute a prospective client asks me to assist in developing an ROI justification for their intranet I suddenly become very busy! I have a huge problem with any justification for an intranet that ...
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December 9, 2002 by James Robertson
ROI on professional usability testing
Charles L. Mauro has produced a 57-page whitepaper on ROI on professional usability testing. The abstract is as follows: This paper discusses the return on investment (ROI) implications of integrating formal usability testing methods into web development projects. Online and traditional lab- based approaches are discussed and compared for their ...
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November 26, 2002 by James Robertson
ROI for intranet communication?
Gerry McGovern has written about assessing the impact of communication via an intranet, looking specifically on the business benefits it delivers. To quote: A way to measure return on investment (ROI) for your intranet is to answer two basic questions. How does the intranet increase the level and quality of ...
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November 25, 2002 by James Robertson
Intranet ROI survey
Toby Ward writes about the results from a recent survey into intranet ROI, which looked at which measures were considered to be most important. These were the top five categories of benefits to be identified: Enhanced competitiveness Content management Enhanced communications Hard cost reduction Enhanced customer service Of the specific ROI metrics, these were the ...
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November 20, 2002 by James Robertson
ROI: Results Often Immeasurable?
Norm Alster writes about the challenges in determining ROI (Return on Investment). To quote: Little wonder, then, that most corporate buyers are searching for new ways to gauge the payback from IT investments. Eager to oblige, vendors and consultants have trotted out a variety of tools that purport to more ...
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November 20, 2002 by James Robertson
Intranet ROI case studies
Gerry McGovern has posted a few intranet ROI case studies on his site, primarily from PeopleSoft, Cisco Systems and Hewlett Packard. To quote: An intranet can deliver return on investment (ROI) by either reducing the cost, or expanding the ability, to communicate. By shifting manual processes to the intranet, the ...
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November 12, 2002 by James Robertson
How Idiots Track Success (HITS)
Martin White has written a blog entry discussing ways of measuring intranet success, such as usage stats or surveys. This is certainly a difficult area, one that I think we are all still struggling with. To quote Martin: Web page stats for intranets can be very misleading. You can often ...
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October 3, 2002 by James Robertson
Estimating productivity
Peter Edmonston writes about the challenges of estimating productivity when calculating ROI for IT projects. To quote: A company needs to consider an array of factors, including the number of employees affected by a project, how much each is paid, and the amount of time each is expected to save. ...
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September 20, 2002 by James Robertson
Assessment and measurement SIG
The Knowledgeboard provides an excellent special interest group for knowledge management assessment and measurement. This includes a discussion board, and a good range of useful articles and case studies. Well worth keeping an eye on. (My only frustration is that all the articles are delivered as PDFs, which makes it ...
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September 20, 2002 by James Robertson
The dollar value of an intranet?
Toby Ward has written two articles on measuring the dollar value of an intranet. In Part 1 he introduces the issues, and outlines three high-level ways of measuring intranet ROI: Ascribe the intranet a value equal to the investment; dollar in equals dollar out. Ascribe a non-monetary value to the intranet ...
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September 4, 2002 by James Robertson
A Culture of Numbers
Paul Cox writes about the culture of numbers at Worldcom. This is a very interesting view of a situation where metrics became the end, not the means. To quote: Any part of our work that could be measured and put into a spreadsheet was reported and circulated and compared ...
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August 31, 2002 by James Robertson
Optimising intranet ROI
Mike Parsons writes about how to determine ROI for intranets. A quote from the article: ROI with intranets and extranets can be hard to determine. Many of the benefits fall into the 'soft' category and therefore lack the weight of clear revenue improvements. However, there is much evidence to suggest ...
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July 24, 2002 by James Robertson
Call centre measures
Melissa Solomon has written a very brief article on the call centre measures used by Pacific Gas & Electric Co. While this article doesn't really explore the topic, it is always interesting to see what metrics are being used in various settings.
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