If it walks like a duck and sounds like a duck then it’s probably… a duck. But don’t count on a duck to deliver ROI. <Insert expletive and comment about “what the hell is he talking about?!?!>
Aflac is a big brand with a quirky following. Well, they have a quirky mascot in the form of a duck that is their figurehead and advertising spokesperson… errr, spokesduck. You’ve no doubt heard the chortle of the affable duck sounding a little like Donald Duck if he had smoked one too many Cuban cigars (Oops! Of course, I meant to say Dominican or Guatemalan cigars… the kind that don’t fill the coffers of Generalissimo Fidel).
“AFLAC!” goes the familiar bellow. Go ahead play with the duck. Download the sound bite for your own amusement. Make sure you turn it up so that your fellow employees know that you’re busily working on some mission critical project.
Getting to the point… I just read a half decent case study on the Aflac intranet portal. The case study is in fact a sales pitch by BEA Plumtree who implemented their portal product as the platform for the Aflac intranet. But as far as commonly available intranet case studies go, this is not bad. It even has a mock-up of the Aflac portal home page proudly showcasing that ubiquitous, sad, out-of-the-box Plumtree look-and-feel.
Aflac’s Best Practices for Driving Portal Adoption and ROI is the name of the case study and webinar presented by Line 56 and BEA. Sounds encouraging and right to the point – with ROI! Boy, it’s refreshing to find a case study that promotes ROI and ACTUALLY has ROI! Except this ROI case study has no ROI. Nope, no ROI.
It’s really not a bad case study. There is some good process background and a couple of screenshots. But no ROI.
What’s the point I’m trying to make? Ducks make great mascots. No, that’s not it.
ROI is good, very good… if you actually have ROI. ROI stands for return on investment and is a monetary metric based on a formula where the value of an investment is divided by the cost of the investment (value ÷ cost = ROI). It is measured and demonstrated as a percentage of the initial investment (e.g. 95%).
A case study demonstrates a best practice and proves a measure of success. It is not a sales pitch. Beware the ROI case study with no ROI. If it walks like a duck and sounds like a duck… it might actually be a sales rep for a portal vendor.
To measure and increase the value of your intranet, please dowload the free white paper, Finding ROI.
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Some good intranet case studies with ROI:
Leading intranet case study: IBM’s W3
Intranet Insider World Tour: Sodexho USA
Part II - QAS intranet case study – anatomy of a winner
QAS intranet case study – anatomy of a winner
More reading on intranet ROI (with real ROI!!):
© 2006 Toby Ward - Prescient Digital Media