Demostrating Intranet ROI
From fledgling organizations to multinational corporations, the early anecdotal evidence and research studies indicate that intranets have the potential to generate a significant return on investment. However, the reaction of senior management may be somewhat skeptical. They know that new technology usually costs more and delivers less than promised.
If your intranet is still in the proposal stage, or if you are trying to make the case for expanding your organization's intranet, here are some suggested strategies for addressing senior management's typical questions and concerns.
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Pilot intranet applications with a small test group before rolling them out to a broad audience. This allows you to test the most cost effective technologies, identify the true costs of maintaining the internal Web 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, and get a realistic picture of the payback period.
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Research the costs involved in a short list of communications in your organization and conduct experiments to quantify the savings in moving these communications over to an intranet. For example, identify the cost per copy, including distribution of a document that is easily ported to an internal server. Model the potential cost savings over five revisions to the document.
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Focus on intranet applications that have revenue generation potential as well as cost saving benefits. In terms of total return on investment, an intranet targeted to improving the productivity and effectiveness of a company's sales force may make a better case for the technology than employee access to an online benefits manual.
In the view of the skeptics, intranet deployment is not easy and cost savings are not guaranteed. "Ramping up" the technology and dealing with the human factor, including training employees are reengineering work processes, are formidable hurdles to achieving the high and rapid return on investment some organizations have claimed. On the other hand, intranet advocates observe that as the technology proliferates and becomes a business necessity, the question of quantifying return on investment will become moot.
Until that happy day arrives, business communicators would be well advised to focus intranet applications on solving the problems senior management cares about - such as building sales, increasing organizational speed, and supporting customers, and make the case accordingly.
Reprinted from Intranet Communicator (June/July 1997). George McGrath is a partner at Osgood, O'Donnell & Walsh. Anthony Schneider is a principal at Web Zeit. You can Email them
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