From the Intranet ROI webinar, here are (with some paraphrasing) some of the questions and answers on return on investment (ROI) and intranets:

Q – How do you get people to measure costs in the organization?

A- As the participant alluded to in so many words, it is difficult to get people to find, measure or share their often guarded cost data. However, the only way to measure ROI is to first determine the costs, and then measure or project the future value. Therefore cost measurement begets ROI measurement. Getting fellow managers and employees to go out and gather cost data is an exercise in motivation.

At Prescient, we conduct a team workshop with key managers from IT, Finance, Operations, Human Resources, Communications and others that might be relevant keepers of cost data that might include business unit or corporate service managers.

After introducing the concept and using case studies and benchmark examples we use a detailed matrix and review some of the 150+ measurable ROI benefits that can be accrued to an intranet or portal. Benefits are reviewed and agreed to and individual participants are assigned ‘homework’ to hit the books and to get the data (e.g. the current costs of operating the IT help desk, independent intranet sites, e-mail servers, etc.). See the Intranet ROI Workshop for more information.

Q- How does Cisco or others determine what goes on their home page?

A- Known intranet leaders such as IBM and Cisco have had intranets for more than a dozen years. So, for starters, they’ve had a lot of practice. Secondly, in those years, they’ve spent a lot of time getting to know employees and what they want. A lot of time has been put into tweaking and enhancing as the result of studying web logs, conducting user surveys, focuses groups and usability testing. Not to mention implementing best practices.

But it’s not just delivering on employee needs and expectations, but also those of the organization as a whole including management requirements and strategic goals. At IBM, the intranet home page is a personalized portal powered by Websphere. So the end user has the ability to pick and choose some of the content that appears on their home page (see

At Cisco, no personalization is delivered, but the user has the option to choose their own hot links or “My Links” – individual bookmarks that appear on the user’s home page. There is also role-based dashboards or pages that are targeted to specific employee roles such as new employees, managers, administrative, engineering, sales, and others.

How does understanding employee requirements relate to ROI? The intranet has to deliver value for employees to use it. If you build it... and employees don't see value in using the intranet, they will not come. If they don't come, you won't get the ROI.

To measure and increase the value of your intranet, please dowload the free white paper, Finding ROI.

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© 2006 Toby Ward - Prescient Digital Media

By providing better self-help information and FAQs, one financial client was able to reduce employee calls to the internal help desk by one-third, almost 40,000 calls per year (at $18  per call) – yielding an estimated savings of $697,115 per year. Enough to pay for the intranet redesign many times over.

One of my personal favorites is the Sodexho USA Sales SuperSleuth (see Intranet Insider World Tour: Sodexho USA). SuperSleuth is an intranet web page and application that encourages employees to submit sales leads and prospective clients via the intranet. The SuperSleuth intranet page generates cash rewards of up to $1000 for the person making the submission. Sodexho says it has contributed to a 100% increase in sales leads in the past year and led to US$90 million dollars in managed volume (net client sales including sales by client).

That’s the beautiful part about measuring ROI – you don’t have to measure the total value of an intranet (which is typically in the millions of dollars for a decent intranet for an organization of 5,000 employees), you just have to measure some of the low-hanging fruit.

If you’re one of the few fortunate that don’t have to justify an intranet redesign than you are one of the few fortunate. There are however few organizations that do not require a business case for six-figure redesign or the implementation of a new content management system or portal that typically runs anywhere from $100,000 to several million dollars. The average would be between $200,000 and $300,000 for an enterprise solution. Of course the bigger company and the more integration required, the bigger the bill. The bigger the bill, the more reason for you to measure ROI.

If you haven’t done any ROI measurement, then I strongly suggest you attend the Measuring Intranet Value: Proving & Delivering ROI webinar. At only $95 and 75-minutes long, this is a very worthwhile investment that promises you a positive ROI (tried as I might, I could come up with nothing more catchy or ute to write).

This informative 75 minute webinar will teach you:

Ø       How to measure return on investment

Ø       How to identify very specific measurable benefits

Ø       Priorities for building a business case

Ø       Best practices & case studies that measure ROI

To measure and increase the value of your intranet, please dowload the free white paper, Finding ROI.

Register now for Measuring Intranet Value: Proving & Delivering ROI.

Measuring the return on investment (ROI) of your intranet is actually pretty easy. It does however require some time to do the measurement, some knowledge of what to measure, and the cooperation and involvement of the data owners for what is being measured (e.g. costs of the IT help desk).

Firstly though, you have to want to measure the value of the intranet. I can say with almost 100% certainty, even though they may not have explicitly stated so to you, your senior management wants to know that the intranet is delivering value. But can you prove it?

Measuring Intranet Value: Proving & Delivering ROI is a 75-minute webinar that will teach you how to prove it.

Date: November 28, 2006

Time: 1:00 pm EST

Location: From your computer (webinar)

Cost: $95 (yes, it is that cheap, but far more valuable)

This informative 75 minute webinar will teach you:

Ø       How to measure return on investment

Ø       How to identify very specific measurable benefits

Ø       Priorities for building a business case

Ø       Best practices & case studies that measure ROI

Here’s a sneak preview of one case study… Prescient measured the dollar value of one client’s intranet by measuring 12 specific benefits over a two-year period. The two-year value was more than $1.5 million. Their investment in the intranet was less than $200,000. Therefore the 2-year ROI was more than 700%. Some of the measured ROI benefits included software distribution, phone directory, HR forms, and content management savings.  

To measure and increase the value of your intranet, please dowload the free white paper, Finding ROI.

Register now for Measuring Intranet Value: Proving & Delivering ROI.