Social Power Has Revenue Power – CSC Digital Disruptions Report

Do you “get” the value of social computing but have a difficult time proving that value?  I am constantly approached by companies that are anxious to deploy social computing solutions but they struggle with building the business case to get funding.  Companies inherently understand that social computing can help their business but in this tough economic environment it is critical for them to prove it. 

The good news is that you can prove the value of social computing with hard and soft cost savings and revenue increases.  We find 2 things to be especially helpful on this front – our Social Computing ROI tool and tangible examples from other companies. 

Based on our work of implementing 100s of social computing and enterprise RSS solutions for the Fortune 2000, we developed and constantly refine a Social Computing ROI tool that helps clients quantify social computing financial benefits.  If you are interested in that tool, you can email me at lauraf@newsgator.com. 

But for this blog post, I want to give you tangible customer examples that you can use as ammunition when working on ROI justifications for your social computing purchase. 

I recently read CSC’s 2008 Digital Disruptions Report.  The report included several examples of the business value that social computing has provided in the enterprise.  I have included excerpts below.  If you would like to learn more, you can read the entire report on the CSC website.

• Using social network analysis, one multinational petrochemical company reported that a single network of 60 people contributed $5 million in savings a year by transferring best practices effectively within the company. In one situation, an oil well expected to be shut down for four days was up and running in two days because an engineer working on the problem was able to identify an expert to help him fix it, cutting in half the number of production days lost.
• Being able to make more informed decisions faster can save manufacturers millions in annual operations.
• Having leaders think about their personal connections helps with succession planning and knowledge retention as people retire.
• Connecting the right experts, who may not be interacting, can often lead to new product ideas.

Here are a few of my favorite ROI examples from NewsGator’s customers.

• A $3B Pharma/Biotech company justified the entire purchase of their solution by eliminating or replacing premium content sources.  The company found that 80% of the premium content it was paying for was available via free RSS feeds.
• A federal credit union in Ohio used social computing and enterprise RSS to speed communication and improve collaboration with its branch employees.  The credit union measured a 30 minute/per day per employee productivity savings with the new solution.
• A leading media communications company found that it could lower IT development and support costs by implementing a social computing solution that was built specifically for use behind-the-firewall and that integrated with its existing Microsoft technology stack.  The company estimated that it would have cost 3 to 4 times more to build such features internally.

I hope these examples give you ideas on how social power can drive business benefits.  How has your company proven the financial impacts of social computing technologies?