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IBM Software Services for Lotus White Paper June 2010 Measuring the value of social software Defining a measurement approach that maps activity to business value
IBM Software Services for LotusWhite Paper
June 2010
Measuring the value of social softwareDefining a measurement approach that maps activity to business value
Measuring the value of social software
Contents
Introduction
Why measure?
Defining objectives
Types of measurement
Measurement levels
Measurement tools
Sample reports
Getting started
Conclusion
Introduction
Organizations across a variety of industries are leveragingsocial software and collaboration tools to promote efficiencyand innovation. As more and more companies implementsocial software initiatives to improve communication andcollaboration and to drive business results, a key question isbeing asked:
How can we determine if our social softwareinitiatives are successful and are providing theanticipated return on technology investment?
Part of the answer lies in identifying at the beginning of thedeployment what success will look like for the differentbusiness uses for which social software technology is beingleveraged. Another key piece is establishing a measurementapproach that captures information about the usage of socialsoftware tools, how they are influencing individual, group andorganizational behavior, and what quantifiable business valueis being generated from the investment in social softwaretechnology.
This white paper will take a look at how to measure theeffectiveness and value of a social software initiative, whattools are available to capture key metrics, and what to takeinto consideration when establishing a measurementapproach.
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Measuring the value of social software
Why measure?
As the popularity of social software for business platformsgrows, new challenges are being encountered around how tosuccessfully leverage social software tools.
Gartner predicts that over 70 percent of IT-dominated socialmedia initiatives will fail through 2012.1 Key issues behind thisforecast include the lack of methods, technologies, tools, andskills to effectively design and deliver social media solutions.While organizations are positioned to successfully deploystandard technology solutions, success with social softwareinitiatives requires bridging the needs of both IT rollouts withbusiness-driven efforts to achieve quantifiable results.
Adding to the challenge, Gartner also predicts that only 25%of enterprises will routinely utilize social network analysis toimprove performance and productivity through 2015. 2
These predictions point to potential pitfalls that can affect thesuccess of a social software initiative if steps are not takenduring the planning phase to identify how usage of socialsoftware can meet objectives that deliver business results.They also highlight a largely untapped resource – socialnetwork analysis – that can provide important insight intoactivities and interactions which can help organizations takeprescriptive action to ensure the success of their initiatives.
A comprehensive measurement approach can help addressthese issues and is something that should be taken intoconsideration right from the start with any social software orcollaboration project. Simply put – a measurement programcan help focus attention on what you're trying to do and whatsuccess will look like.
On an ongoing basis, measurement can provide insight intothe behaviors and relationships that organizations mustcontinue to build in order to be successful. Since socialsoftware tools are intended to support the creation andmaintenance of these relationships, ongoing measurement ofbehaviors is important to understanding how successful thesetools are for an organization.
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Measuring the value of social software
Defining objectives
Since there are literally hundreds of metrics that can becaptured, it is especially important to 'begin with the end inmind'. Understanding what you are trying to ultimatelyaccomplish will help define the appropriate criteria to measureand which measurement tools to use.
Common business use objectives
Some of the most common business uses for social softwareinclude helping organizations:
• Work more effectively across countries and time zones• Bring together expertise from multiple sites/countries• Reduce travel costs• Bring innovations to market more quickly• Deliver projects in less time• Resolve problems more quickly• Retain more of the experience of people leaving the
company/retirees• Enable those working in new roles to get up to speed faster• Build communities of practice to foster and share key areas
of knowledge• Improve staff retention• Work more closely with customers and suppliers Stakeholders
Within an organization, different stakeholder groups will havespecific objectives which can range from basic adoption ofsocial software tools to improving the robustness of aparticular community to showing overall return on investment.Depending on interest area, stakeholders will be interested indifferent information that tracks and measures the activities,capabilities, or business value generated by a social softwareinitiative.
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Measuring the value of social software
Questions by measurement type
Types of measurement
As part of a comprehensive approach, efforts to evaluate thesuccess of a social software initiative should involve threeprimary measures – vitality, capability, and business value.
Vitality
Vitality examines fundamental measures of user activity suchas the number of blog entries posted, reads on a blog,communities created, or profiles updated. These contributionand consumption-based measures provide a good short-termlook at adoption by tracking individual actions to determineusage of the technology.
Capability
Capability measures dig deeper into assessing how socialsoftware tools are being used to improve the capabilities ofthe organization. An example of a capability measure could bethe ability of employees to locate expertise more efficiently orto more quickly find solutions to problems.
Capability is often measured by user perception of whether atask or activity can be completed faster or more easily. It alsocan be measured by tracking the frequency and types ofinteractions, the building of relationships, as well as thecreation and the flow of knowledge and information.
Business Value
Business value measures go even further by looking at actualreturn on investment. These revolve around measuring longer-term achievement toward the key process indicators (KPIs) orkey value indicators (KVIs) that are unique to eachorganization and driven by its business strategy.
Some examples of business value measures are measuringwhether a call center can handle more calls or resolvecustomer calls more quickly, or showing how a new productcan be brought to market in less time.
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Measuring the value of social software
Measurement levels
In addition to addressing different types ofmeasurements, it is also important to measureat different levels within an organization inorder to see big picture results as well as seemore granular results at the group andindividual levels.
Organization-wide
Organization-wide metrics are useful inassessing overall progress and setting long-term targets. For many social softwareproducts, simple tools are available to trackthis type of metric. The measurementsproduced at an organizational level may bedifficult to interpret since looking at a largesample can bypass successes at the individualor group/community levels – making it harderto take targeted prescriptive actions to improvefuture results.
Group/community
Since different stakeholder groups can have differentobjectives, group metrics can provide insight at amore targeted level by addressing variations in usecase and adoption patterns across the organization.They provide a means for tracking business adoptionat the community, team or department level.Measuring at this level provides a way to explorehow different groups are using different socialsoftware tools and why they are doing so.
Individual
Individual metrics can surface information about howpeople are consuming or contributing content.Looking at individual actions can drive awareness oftools and contribute to long-term adoption. Be awarethat tracking information at this level may raiseconcerns around privacy. If people feel they arebeing monitored, they may be less willing toparticipate in measurement activities. Somegeographies have data privacy legislation that mustbe respected.
Levels of interaction
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Measuring the value of social software
Measurement tools
The tools selected for measurement should beable to capture vitality, capability, and businessvalue measures as well as track information atdifferent levels (organization, group/community,and individual).
Tools by measurement type
Measuring vitality – Creation, consumption, andmembership metrics
Many collaboration and social software tools alreadyhave a measurement capability included in them thatprovide basic metrics. For example, IBM LotusConnections includes functionality that can trackdifferent measures such as blog postings, number ofcommunities, number of bookmarks posted, andmany others. This provides a good starting point toget an organizational view of some of the vitalitymeasures.
To extend that functionality, IBM also has developedan asset that works on top of Lotus Connections toprovide some valuable additional capabilities. Thisasset – the Reporting Tool for Lotus Connections –provides the ability to look at historic data and seethe trends over time.
The Reporting Tool allows you to compare the levelof usage across different objects (blogs, bookmarks,activities). It can also dive deeper than basicorganization-wide metrics and look at individual andgroup results. Groups here can be a community, anorganization group, or a group of users in aparticular country.
Different modules in the tool provide differentmetrics. The System Metrics module displays theoverall Lotus Connections metrics in both asnapshot and trended over time. The Object Metricsmodule displays the metrics related to individualobjects within each service such as metrics for aspecific blog or community. The User Metricsdisplays selected metrics by individual users. Accessto each of these levels of metrics is controllable toprotect privacy concerns.
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Measuring the value of social software
Sample Reports
Blog and Community Snapshot Metrics
Snapshot views generated by the Reporting Tool for Lotus Connections
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Measuring the value of social software
Sample Reports
Blog Trending Metrics
Trending view generated by the Reporting Tool for Lotus Connections showing new blog entries over a period oftime
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Measuring the value of social software
Measuring capability – Composite metrics,social network analysis and user surveys
Since capabilities are usually combinations ofmultiple actions, composite metrics or proxiescan be used to capture multiple, relatedmeasurements. One example of this is a'return-on-contribution' (ROC) metric forbookmarks by combining the number of timesusers find content by using bookmarks dividedby the number of bookmark contributions. Thisrepresents both creation and consumption.
Social network analysis (SNA) can also beused to support capability measurements. SNAmetrics can provide important insights into keyattributes of the informal network, who iscommunicating with whom, and if there arenetwork weaknesses in different locations ordepartments. These metrics capture part of the'social capital' that is dependent on the use ofthe informal network within an organization.
IBM offers an asset called Atlas for LotusConnections that supports expertise searchacross an organization as well as can extractsocial network data from the organization suchas community membership, colleagues onLotus Connections, sent email messages, andsent instant messages. Since the informationbeing captured is based on what users areproducing in the course of their work, this is anon-intrusive way of capturing real-worldbehavior.
In addition, structured surveys can be used to collectuser feedback. These can capture user perceptionabout whether social software tools are helping toachieve results such as making it easier to locateexperts and relevant knowledge to solve problems.When planning surveys, be sure to allow for thegathering of benchmark data on the "before"situation so that you can see the level of changeproduced.
Measuring business value - KPIs/KVIs
Business value measures can often be capturedusing measurement tools that already exist to followkey process indicators and key value indicators. Forexample, if the goal is to measure increases incustomer call center efficiency, the tracking toolswhich that center already uses can be leveraged tomeasure how long it takes to close the average usercall, how many calls the operatives are handling, andso on. These can then be correlated with Vitality andCapability measurements to better understand thecontributions that the enabling technologies provideto the business measurements.
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Measuring the value of social software
Creating a Measurement Approach
When creating a measurement approach, thekey is to define the metrics you want to capturein terms of the use cases that are of highinterest to the stakeholders and that supportspecific business objectives.
To determine progress, prior to starting anydeployment, capture a “before” snapshot thatcan be used for comparison.
Steps to creating a framework
1. Identify a specific use case and a clear set ofobjectives for that use case.
2. Based on your objectives, outline what types ofmeasures (vitality, capability, or business value)you want to capture and at what level(organization, group, or individual).
3. Identify the appropriate measurement tools totrack and monitor progress and success.
Sample measurement framework
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Measuring the value of social software
Getting started
When it comes to helping measure the success of socialsoftware initiatives that leverage the different components ofLotus Connections, IBM can help provide both the tooling andthe expertise to help define a measurement approach thatcan help you understand business impact and benefits.
The IBM Software Services for Lotus group can work withorganizations to create and apply a measurement frameworkthat captures specific metrics using tools available withinLotus Connections or other tools that are available from IBMincluding the Reporting Tool for Lotus Connections and Atlasfor Lotus Connections. By leveraging different tools in yourmeasurement framework, you can get a more holistic pictureof what impact the social software or collaborativeenvironment is having, how adoption is progressing, and howclose you are toward getting a demonstrable return oninvestment from the project.
In addition to helping create a framework, the LotusConnections experts at IBM Software Services for Lotus canhelp install and implement the various tooling required andconduct social network analysis to measure the health ofsocial networks within an organization.
Conclusion
Developing a defined measurement approach early in theplanning stages and prior to wide-scale deployment of socialsoftware tools is essential to the success of your initiatives.
Having a clear idea of what you want to accomplish throughyour social software initiative by outlining your businessobjectives and specific use cases will help ensure you reachyour goals. The creation of a measurement approach basedon these objectives will provide the framework against whichyou can measure results and support efforts to makeadjustments that ensure success.
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Measuring the value of social software
For more informationTo learn more about social softwaremeasurement and reporting services andtools, please visit the following Web sites:
IBM Software Services for Lotus
ibm.com/software/lotus/services
Lotus Connections Measurement and Reporting
ibm.com/software/lotus/servicessocialsw_measurementreporting.html
Atlas for Lotus Connections
ibm.com/software/lotus/servicesatlasasset.html
About the authors
Chris Cooper is a Collaboration and SocialSoftware Consultant for IBM Software Services forLotus
Mike Martin is a Senior Managing Consultant forIBM Software Services for Lotus
Terry Kiernan is an Offerings Specialist for IBMSoftware Services for Lotus
© Copyright IBM Corporation 2010
IBM CorporationRogers StreetCambridge, MA 02142U.S.A.
Produced in the United States of AmericaJune 2010All Rights Reserved
IBM, the IBM logo, and ibm.com, Lotus, and LotusConnections, are trademarks or registered trademarks ofInternational Business Machines Corporation in the UnitedStates,other countries, or both. If these and other IBMtrademarked terms are marked on their first occurrence inthis information with a trademark symbol (® or ™), thesesymbols indicate U.S. registered or common law trademarksowned by IBM at the time this information was published.Such trademarks may also be registered or common lawtrademarks in other countries. A current list of IBMtrademarks is available on the Web at “Copyright andtrademark information” at ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml
Other company, product, and service names may betrademarks
References in this publication to IBM products or services donot imply that IBM intends to make them available in allcountries in which IBM operates.
1, 2 Gartner Reveals Five Social Software Predictions for 2010and Beyond, February 2, 2010; http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1293114 | Full report - “Predicts 2010: SocialSoftware Is an Enterprise Reality”
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