RE: Re: CMS ROI?

James,

I think most people acknowledge that the focus should be on business metrics
rather than more parochial website related metrics (time & effort saved as
you mention) but the mapping from higher-level business goals to specific
projects still seems to be problematic for many organisations. The
University you mention is interesting in this respect - do you have any
further detail on how they actually did the benefits mapping between better
website & improved recruitment & disentangle it from other related
initiatives? I would be very interested to hear more about this...

Cheers

David

Airtight Ltd 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email protected] 
> [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of James Robertson
> Sent: 21 May 2005 05:13
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: [CMS] 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]
> 
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