Justifying Social Software

It's true that most organizations won't move forward with significant investments without some sort of justification.

And it's also true that the category of "productivity software" is perhaps the most difficult thing to justify.

So, I thought I'd spend this post on the flavors of business value we're seeing from our internal environment.

How People Think Of Justification

One useful analogy for business justifcation might be thought of in terms of "big chunks". 

For example, it'd be really nice to say that we brought a product to market six months earlier, and earned $50m for our company in the process.

Or, we eliminated the need for 400 airplane trips, each worth $2000 or more in travel expenses and productivity costs.

Or, maybe, we had a key strategic breakthrough that resulted in a new $100m business.

BTW, none of this actually happened with our internal social media platform, but -- hey! -- wouldn't it be great if it did? 

Certainly, everyone would "get it", right?

It's Human Nature

People tend to look for big, chunky boulders of justification.  Large, concrete and tangible hunks of business value that you can hit people over the head with, and there's no argument.

I tend to imagine that -- in ideal world -- we'd have a big dump truck full of large boulders of justification.  I routinely meet people who expect me to back up the dump truck, and unload big, weighty hunks of business value, each unarguable and massive in their own regard, and bury them in the mass of value created.

I think the expectation is wrong.

In terms of business justification, the better analogy is perhaps a dump truck of sand, rather than boulders.

The individual justification elements are smaller, but -- taken together -- it's still a very weighty proposition.

Micro-justification in Social Media Environments

A dump truck full of sand weighs as much (if not more) than a dump truck full of boulders.  The boulders are easier to understand and visualize; individual grains of sand take a bit more work to fully comprehend.

But, taken together, they result in just as much mass as their rock counterparts.

And, quite honestly, although we can point to a few, big, chunky examples of that quintessential "business value", the majority of what we're seeing are thousands of small examples, which -- taken together -- far outweigh the traditional views of business justification.

Some Examples Might Help

I routinely peruse our internal social media platform, trying to understand what's going on, and looking for nuggets of business value to share with others who aren't familiar with what we're doing.

One particulary story captures the spirit of what I'm talking about, e.g. micro-justification vs. macro-justification.

One of the product managers in one of our product groups invited a rather expensive consultant in to address the team.  She wanted to shoot a video of the event, and then share it with others.

She posted a short query about what she wanted to do, and asked if anyone could help.

Now, EMC has a couple of internal functions that could do this for her, but she didn't know that.  They responded and said they'd be glad to help, but had some questions about format, intended use, and so on.

So, let's look at this analytically.

In a large company, it's highly unlikely that someone in a product group would know that there's some corporate function that could do this for basically free.  So, at a minumum, we avoided $5k in hiring some outside contractor to come in and shoot the production.

Once these people had found each other online, there was some back-and-forth, which would have ordinarily required some sort of face to face meeting (maybe a few) for at least an hour. 

Figure another $2k or so for the opportunity cost associated with having several people in a meeting room for an hour, maybe multiple times.

And, finally, when the video was completed, we had a platform where she could simply post it, and other people could find it easily.  Figure another $1k of her time to find some sort of alternative place to post it (behind the firewall), plus maybe another $5k in business value associated with having other people being able to find it easily.

OK, we're looking at a minimum $15k of business value associated with this person being able to get what she needed to get done online and with a minimum of fuss.

Doesn't float your boat? 

I can find at least 100+ recent examples of similar stories without looking too hard. 

And my $15k becomes $1.5m -- just like that.  Now I've got your attention, right?

Just by connecting people with a need with people who can help on mundane, silly things like shooting a video for a product group.  Grains of sand -- individually, not that compelling, but -- taken together -- can become pretty massive.

Other Examples

I've mentioned in my previous post the business value of graduating bloggers to the outside world.  On that basis alone, we're ROI positive by several orders of magnitude. 

But, just maybe, your business doesn't really get this whole corporate blogging thing.

So, let's talk about "field input".

Now, if you're a product company, you probably spend a lot of time trying to figure out what customers want, what the sales guys want, what the sales management wants, and so on.

Lots of conference calls, or meetings.  Lots of hours spent trying to capture and understand what different parts of the organization want.  Some people want to be involved, others don't.

And, somehow, it's never really satisfying as you can't ask probing, insightful questions of a static Excel chart.

Some of the smarter, more adventurous people at EMC have started to use our platform to drive "what should we do?" discussions in very specific areas.

I can't offer proof as to whether the output is any better than "classical" methods. 

But I can categorically state that (a) only interested parties participate, (b) there's no impact on anyone's productivity, because you can join into the discussion whenever you have a moment, and (c) rank and status don't matter, only the data and arguments that people present.

And, from what I can see, the results from these passionate, online discussions are far superior in their output, and deliver the results in a fraction of the time of "classical" methods.

By my ad-hoc calculations, I see at least $1-$3m of productivity savings (in aggregate) each time someone decides to do this, as compared with traditional input-gathering methods.  And -- oh by the way -- not only do I think the outcomes are far, far better, but I can scroll back into the debates, and see what everyone said.

An Employee Benefit

A rather interesting conversation emerged on our discussion forums -- around benefits, and how to motivate and retain key employees at EMC.

Not surprisingly, a few people observed that having an internal discussion forum for sharing ideas and thoughts with others was a key benefit of working at EMC, and very highly valued.

Now, ask yourself, how much would it cost to create and fund an alternative "key employer benefit, highly valued by your highest-performing employees"? 

Several million dollars?  Perhaps more?

And A Final Example

Maybe I've saved the best for last ...

You might not know this, but EMC is offering a consumer product these days.  For this particular product, the user interface is oh-so-important.  It's probably the make-or-break characteristic of this particular product.

When I saw their product, I thought they had done well with the UI, but maybe it could be done better.

Because I was a regular user of our internal platform, I had become acquianted with a group of people in another business unit who had the whole "intuitive UI" thing nailed.

They didn't know about each other.  Because our internal platform exposed who was interested in what, I was able to make the connection, and have our consumer product group consult with our "killer UI" group.

Now, I don't know if anything will eventually come of this, or whether this will translate into a significant business advantage for EMC, but the fact that I could easily connect two parts of the business together -- with a minumum of fuss and protocol -- gave me a small, warm feeling.

The Bottom Line

It's normal to ask for business justification for any investment.  I get that part.

But, I think it's fair to say that -- just maybe -- we shouldn't be looking for a truckload of big, honkin' multi-million dollar business justification examples.

Instead, we should think about business justification in terms of grains of sand -- each one small, precious, interesting -- but, taken together, just as massive -- and probably more compelling -- that a truckload of rocks.

Beacuse that's what we're seeing -- hundreds of small, potentially insignificant stories, none of which is individually overpowering in their ability to convince people that what we're doing is a good thing -- but, taken together -- are a massive, compelling force that cannot be denied.

I wonder if people are ready to accept this sort of justification model.

They seemed to accept it for things like email, and cell phones, and investing in nice meeting rooms with projectors and conference facilities.  They understood that productivity affects everyone to a significant degree, and that it's hard to point to something large and blantantly obvious.

But -- will people accept social productivity software using the same sort of justification models?  And, if so, how quickly?

Time will tell ...

Comments

[Gia Lyons]

Well said, and this is exactly what I explain to my customers. In fact, I open with three true stories about how social software inside IBM accelerated innovation (I connected a researcher with a development team an ocean apart), connected a new hire with a mentor faster (he was productive faster as a result), and got work done faster with an ad hoc group ("get connected faster" should really be the tagline for IBM Lotus Connections).

In fact, we have hundreds upon hundreds of anecdotes like you describe, ready to present.

But.

It simply doesn't seem to be enough for the corporate IT folks with their annual corporate IT budget to spend. They STILL want the big boulders (love the sand analogy!).

So my question: what will it take to convince the boulder guys to start looking at the sand?

[@olivermarks]

I think you hit a home run with this post: I used the term 'triangulation' a lot as a business benefit of joining thedots/connecting the silos in large orgnaizations. Connectivity and the ensuing collaboration can be hard to quantify as you discuss here, but the benefits accrue and are sometimes very visible on business process level. Eliminating duplication of effort in multiple silos that don't know each other is surely a no brainer in terms of cost savings from a 10,000 ft vantage point...
That said, this can also be a great way to promote paranoia and feifdom protection in middle managers, the enemy of collaboration...

[John Prichard]

In our company, the top and bottom seem to get that if the company was cross talking more in the "big conversation" then the outcome would be significant. The middle management could use a little justification to start their participation.

In our company, we have a steering team that has seen many examples of collaboration on the outside. Thus, they are enamored with the tools like FaceBook, Flickr, LinkedIn, wikis, blogs, etc. It really isn't about sharing pictures but passionate ideas. Social "grease" like pictures and knowing something about a person helps in lowering barriers to conversation but it isn't the end game. I can't get them to understand that we have a highly collaborative society around narrow topic mailing lists and that we should take some of these attributes and leverage them.

I can't get them to closely examine the principals of social engineering stated eloquently in this blog. And unfortunately I can't get them to read more than 3-4 pages of anything to start to learn what it will take to build the society that they want.

This is why I ask for help. How to take what has been presented for the last 6 months and package it into a knowledge capsule that can be swallowed in 3-4 pages.

I'm thinking something like a list of Social Engineering Guidlines, each with a rationale and then the results. Since we are at the beginning we are at the tool stage and yet most of the principles stated in this blog have not been about the tool but about engineering social change.

Chuck, you will have to send me your email since I haven't been able to locate it.

John Prichard
[email protected]
Texas Instruments