Re: Re: CMS ROI?

At 01:35 AM 20/05/2005, Conor Saunders wrote:

>Yes John, in my view you are correct in suggesting that the true
>determination of the ROI on a CMS project, a priori at any rate, is
>essentialy impossible. Although we sales guys might wish it otherwise,
>some investments simply do not permit of a simplistic arithmetic
>rationale which can magically burst open the corporate coffers every
>time
>and the fact is that CMS is one of those. That said, the same is true of
>all
>sorts of other major corporate investements made daily such as
>advertising campaigns, corporate training programmes etc. etc. the value
>of which can only be "guesstimated" after the fact and which success or
>otherwise will always be difficult to seperate out from the universe of
>all other ever-changing variables.

I think it actually comes back to the business goals of the project:
http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/kmc_goals/index.html

If we try to measure activity (time saved, effort saved, etc), it's
hard (if not impossible) to quantify the ROI. There's simply no consistent
and easy measures that can be applied to all projects.

But that's because we're measuring the wrong thing. Instead, we should
be measuring *outcomes*, which generally relate to what's being delivered
(the site, new features, etc, etc) rather than the CMS itself.

Outcomes could involve:
* increase in sales
* reduction in support calls
* etc, etc

About a month ago, at a workshop I was running in Malaysia, one of the
participants from a local university related a story of their experiences.
Their business goal was to increase the number of students who selected
the university as their first choice. This was a key metric for the whole
unversity, and the website aimed to improve it. To cut a long story short,
they did make a big difference, just by fixing the website.

So this is a perfect example of the right (business-focused) measure,
that was actually delivered upon. Needless to say, getting support for
the next project was then *much* easier...

Cheers,
James
-------------------------
James Robertson
Step Two Designs Pty Ltd
Knowledge Management / Content Management / Intranets

http://www.steptwo.com.au/
[email protected]