ROI is a "fancy" acronym for Return on Investment. While ROI implies success, it usually involves mysterious mathematical formulas that many people can't see or understand. So how does an everyday SharePoint business owner tackle the ROI puzzle? Do you just "flip the switch" on your implementation and move on? Or are you so busy with post-launch support that you don't have time to circle back and quantify your results? This session will help you demonstrate the business value for your SharePoint implementation. We'll examine common ROI calculation methodologies while providing strategies for identifying your ROI niche and quantifying the business value of your SharePoint implementation.

1. De-Mystifying ROI Calculation for SharePoint
Sarah Haase, The SharePoint Librarian
@sarahhaase
http://sarahlhaase.wordpress.com/

2. Collaboration & Search Engineer
Technical writer
CMS/KM implementation & support
Information architect
Librarian
User adoption enthusiast
Code-free SharePoint solution builder
Author

3. • Reduce email • Focus on • Leverage all
Community development
Information architecture
dependency structured knowledge
data assets
• Provide just-
Process optimization
in-time • Incorporate • Build tools
information taxonomies people want
for efficient to use
• Build retrieval
automated • Folksonomies
workflow • Focus on lists, (tagging for
processes not libraries the masses)

4. Businesses shouldn’t be run via spreadsheets
stored on shared drives.

5. Left to their own devices, well-intentioned
people will live in information chaos.

6. Your SharePoint solution isn’t complete until
you’ve measured its effectiveness.

7. ROI is meaningless without context.

8. Agenda
• What is ROI?
• What does good ROI look like?
• Units of measure & common methodologies
• Building your valuation roadmap

9. What is ROI?

10. ROI is…
• A cool acronym
• A method of quantifying benefits reaped
• A way to “feel good” about an investment
• A way to offset opportunity costs
• A method for validating good decisions
• An afterthought

11. TYPICAL measurements
Number of sites
Successful upgrade Business adoption
and site collections
Percentage of
“business critical”
Space consumption Business reliance
docs stored in
SharePoint

12. BETTER measurements
Shortened Quantifiable Quantifiable
business drop in user drop in
processes confusion “hunting” time
Use in place of Successful
Actual dollar
expensive replacement of
savings
alternatives legacy systems

13. The hard part is…
people don’t understand how to make the leap in their organization

14. Quantitative ROI Qualitative ROI
Money Emotional
-Increased revenue -Improved employee morale
-Eliminated tools -Elimination of unpopular tasks
-Increased productivity -Reduced user confusion
-Lowered overhead per sale -Happier customers
Time Evolution of work
-Streamlined business processes -Ability to focus on higher-value tasks
-Just-in-time (JIT) information -More automation, fewer mistakes
-Less rework -Simplify the “hairball”
-Faster time-to-market -Reduce employee turnover

16. For most for-profit companies, cash is king.
In some cases, SharePoint may (in and of itself)
be a revenue stream. But for many of us,
SharePoint represents “soft money”—aka
money that we can avoid spending on a variety
of other tools. Or money we can save by
lowering our overhead costs and decreasing
our time-to-market.

17. Tool elimination example
Expenditure
$800,000
• “Proof of concept”
$700,000
– Speed to Market
$600,000
– Low / No Cost
$500,000
– Leveraged existing platform
$400,000
– Minimal infrastructure cost $300,000
– Leverage existing resources $200,000
– Quick to deploy & modify $100,000
$0
New Sharepoint
Application

18. TIME savings

19. Base formula
Time to
# of Hourly Process
complete
iterations $$$ rate cost
1 iteration

20. Base formula
Time to
# of Hourly Process
complete
iterations $$$ rate cost
1 iteration
15 minutes $650
4 hours x 52 times/year x $50/hour = $10,400

21. “Before”
process
cost
Cost
savings
“After”
(ROI)
process
cost

22. Evolution of work
& Emotional ROI

23. Key “emotional” factors
• Push content to the right people at the right time
• Eliminate the “soul crushing” work
• Don’t make them have 45 windows open at once
• Make your employees & customers happy
• Personal measure of “What’s in it for me?”
• Ability to focus on higher value-add tasks
• Don’t take it away!

24. User
stories
Surveys
SharePoint
usage
metrics
Interviews
Serious
anecdotes

25. - Sue Hanley
A Practical Framework for SharePoint Metrics
http://www.susanhanley.com/white-papers.htm

27. Step 1: Find what is needed
• Ask questions:
– What do we value?
– How do we work? (aka how formal are we?)
– What matters to management?
– What does “good” look like?
– How do we talk about our successes & failures?
• Find examples of success and backtrack

28. Step 2: Plant your stake
Define
Pick a focus
checkpoints on
area
your route
Build a
Define your
timeline & plan
role
for delivery
Determine
Garner support
training needs

29. Step 3: Take baseline measurements

30. Step 4: Define success criterion
From the general To the specific
Reduce duplicate storage of content Eliminate 15GB in duplicated storage within 6 months
Reduce time it takes to complete a business process Reduce weekly overhead of XXX process by 15%
Generate value Generate $250,000 in BPR savings within 1 year

31. Step 5: Calculate your ROI
• Be consistent
• Answer the “What’s in it for me?” question
• Phrase your success in real $$$
• Unite quantitative & qualitative metrics for a richer experience
• Add up all the ROI for every project
• Think about your delivery mechanism

32. Step 6: Spread the word
• Money talks
• Build your elevator speech
• Partner, don’t conquer
• Don’t forget the higher-ups

33. Sarah Haase,
The SharePoint Librarian
@sarahhaase
http://sarahlhaase.wordpress.com/
sarah@splibrarian.onmicrosoft.com