Part Five: How does your company feel about the inclusion of indirect or “soft” benefits?
One of the knocks I often hear against content management ROI is that the majority of benefits are indirect and that a company resists their inclusion. Let’s start with a few examples:
Employee time savings
Process automation (enabling and participating in workflows)
Finding accurate content quickly
Efficiency gains
Improved decision-making processes
CSRs handling an increased number of customers
The best way to measure these indirect benefits is to proactively perform time studies. Perhaps this work could be included as a component of a pilot project? If, for example, prior to the implementation of the content management system, a Tier 1 CSR could manage eighteen (18) transactions per hour and post-implementation this figure is doubled to thirty six (36) transactions per hour, you now have tangible data at your disposal. Other options for the inclusion of indirect benefits include: using a specific percentage (ie. 25%) of the benefits, or lumping these indirect benefits into a section at the end of your ROI analysis and call on/use them only if needed.
See part Four here
See part Three here
