The Return on Investment (ROI) with respect to the use of social computing is a hot topic these days, as more and more organizations and business sectors are realizing social media and social computing are here to stay. Indeed, I just finished co-authoring (with Jay Cross) an article for CLO Magazine laying the groundwork for a new approach to making decisions about investing in social computing capability and dynamics in business environments. I’ll share an abbreviated version here in the next several days.
A number of other practitioners and theorists who pay attention to networks and their dynamics (such as FASTForward’s Jevon Macdonald and Joe McKendrick, Dion Hinchcliffe, Valdis Krebs, Matthew Hodgson, Patti Anklam, Jessica Lipnack, and others) have covered the same or similar ground. It is becoming more apparent that the returns from network activities are found in intangibles that do not fit well into the industrial era concept of Return on Investment (an accounting concept used to make investment decisions in stable, time-defined, typically single-purpose use cases). New assumptions and methods for assessing what to do are needed.
So, I’d like to use the reporting in a ZDNet article that caught my eye titled “A Real ROI From Twitter ? The Start of Social Medical Networks“ to discuss several of the key issues about whether or not to use social computing to achieve purposeful goals and objectives..
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There may not be a big enough return on tweeting yet to report it to your CFO. But it won’t be long before there’s a clear, return on tweeting to report it to your doctor.
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At the Autism One Conference in Chicago, a Web-based program for collecting data on individual cases of the brain development disorder will be unveiled. It’s called ChARMTracker and is designed, at the start, to help ease the burdens of each parent trying to keep track of the drugs, nutritional supplements, physical therapies and dietary tacks being taken to treat their sons or daughters. They will also use it to keep track of any observations about their behaviors that might seem pertinent and how their children are performing academically, as a result of the constantly changing constellation of combinations that are being applied to the still-mystic condition.
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Horn has, for instance, collected 60 two-inch thick binders of observations, medical and supplement records about Sophie, over the last 11 years. Those records would be available to Sophie’s doctors and health care aides, in an instant, if ChARMtracker had been around from the start. They would also be part of a growing mound of evidence on how drugs, supplements, therapies and diet affected autistic individuals, as they grew and evolved.
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Pramila has founded another company, MedicalMine Inc., which will take what she has developed and try to extend the approach to other chronic physical conditions and forms of disease management.
If all goes well, parents and patients will not just be collecting and sharing data through sites like this on the Web. They’ll be communicating with doctors and providing real-time evidence of results, through tweets and other instant messaging technologies. In some cases, sensors will provide constant streams of data that will be put into the record and analyzed, for individuals and the group, as a whole.
These social medical networks could wind up being “the most fundamental IT app” that a family or its friends need, when desperately seeking answers about afflictions suffered by anyone they care about.
For that, every data element – and every tweet – will count.
And, over the long haul, produce a calculable return.
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So, to begin measuring increases in effectiveness and value in a networked social computing environment, please consider the concept of Return on Investment in Interaction (ROII), which we have derived from the principles of Metcalfe’s Law of Networks (as have many of the others cited above). Why, you may ask, do the above excerpts portend being able to identify and / or assess Return on Investment in Interaction ?
Identifying and Measuring ROII (Return on Investment in Interaction)
The focus in purposeful networked environments is to do what’s important and involve those who know what’s important, why it’s important and what they know (or know how to find out) about a problem or issue.
Let’s define some core assumptions about ROII :
Continuous flows of information are the raw material of value creation and overall performance,
Information flows are carried by links, alerts, RSS feeds, search engines, aggregation and filtering of content, etc.
All leading social / collaboration platforms now feature social networking, search and computing capabilities,
These platforms’ architectures facilitate purposeful cross-silo communications and exchange.
Increase in number of projects formed from all three factors above
It’s important, we think, to note here that we are not proposing a definitive answer but rather the need to debate and clarify the issue(s). However, an attentive read of the ZDNet article referenced above clearly aligns with Krebs’ four principles:
1. Increase in size of network: As The CHARMTracker database grows and the volume of families’ data it holds increases, it’s utility to doctors, other health care professionals and the families themselves increases. And, as the article points out, if and when the data begins to be (appropriately) used by those networked around the health issues, the value of the interaction will increase in an (likely) exponential fashion.
2. Increase in internal network connectivity: Again, as suggested by the paragraphs excerpted from the ZDNet article, as more and more participants are networked into the CHARMTracker information and begin to use the dynamics of social networks to seek for and circulate pertinent and useful information, each time a piece of information is useful to someone there’s a tangible return on the intangible capacity offered by the flows of information and knowledge.
3. Increase in connection to valuable 3rd parties: As more information fills the CHARMTracker database, and more doctors, health care professional and families use it, the apparent value will become clear to others with expertise or value to provide to the social medical network that will have grown up around autism issues. Expect to see both volunteer and for-profit services to be added to the growing ecosystem of knowledge and attention.
This expected outcome reminds me of the core argument of Shoshan Zuboff’s book “The Support Economy – Why Corporation Are Failing Individuals and the Next Episode of Capitalism”, wherein she argues that the complexity surrounding many issues in today’s society are such that all sorts of people (consumers, families, professionals, and so on) will need “support” that can be designed, built and delivered via the digital interlinked infrastructure we know as the Web.
4. Increase in number of projects formed from all three factors above: It’s pretty easy to imagine that as the CHARMTRacker database and its use(s) take root, there will be other clever and useful projects that grow out of the experience and the learning it affords. Doc Searls, of Cluetrain Manifesto and VRM (Vendor Relations Management) fame once sagely noted that one of the critical outcomes of operating in purposeful social networks was the “scaffolding” (building in layer upon layer) of useful knowledge.
That’s how circulating pertinent information and sharing useful knowledge works .. we don’t go backwards, we build on what’s useful and what works. That’s how Return On Investment in Interaction will work and will deliver value to organization and groups who decide to use social networks, linked information and data, and social computing dynamics to accelerate their effectiveness towards achieving their purpose.
During a recent business trip to France, I met with a range of business people interested in and involved with early Web 2.0 initiatives in the corporate arena. There’s a lot of interest in the area (as there is in North America) and it seems to be growing rapidly.
Martin and Stan introduced me to, and helped me understand, an interesting case study involving bringing a large and somewhat monolithic quasi-governmental organization (SNCF, the French national rail transportation company) into the 21st Century in terms of interaction with and listening to customers on the Web.
I also remember reading a Reuters or AP feed to the Globe and Mail a couple of years back in which Maurice Levy, Chairman and CEO of Publicis, clearly stated that he and his colleagues wholeheartedly believed that digital and the Web were the future. He mentioned in the news piece that Publicis would be giving priority to learning more about Web 2.0 and incorporating a range of the elements into its offerings and practices.
SNCF’s web site is the largest e-commerce site in France. The following graph gives you a sense of it’s presence on line and the amount of conversational activity it stimulates.
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In the last several years it has gone about updating it’s web site to reflect a growing range of content and opportunities for customers to communicate / interact with the company. Publicis is the digital branding / communications consulting agency that has helped it design and build these sites.
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2006 SNCF Site
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2007 SNCF Site
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The changes year over year reflect the increasing opportunities and demand for interaction, and in 2008 SNCF decided to test, in a pilot project, the much-ballyhooed listening to and speaking with customers with a new site, a section of which (at the URL http://debats.sncf.com) carries the tag line “Talk To Us” (or “Speak With Us”).
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2008 SNCF Site
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The growing awareness of the need for and utility of hosting conversations with customers led SNCF to realize that it “is a company that people talk about a lot on the Web without it being able to answer the criticisms“. They decided they wanted to explore “how can we create the conditions for dialogue with Web users?”
SNCF, with the help of Publicis, decided to take advantage of the launch of the newest version of the site to create an interactive space to stimulate and engage in conversation with (current and potential) customers who use the web site.
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2008 “Talk With Us”
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Creating this interactive and participative space involved the following steps:
SNCF recruited voluntary spokespeople within their staff
Web users ask the spokespeople their questions about the SNCF
They are able to vote and comment on other people’s questions
Every day, the “spokespeople” answer the questions elected by the Web users
Thus SNCF and the customer participants on the Web site co-create the content of this space. From what I learned in talking with Stan and Martin, an important additional effect has been the feedback from customers working its way back into some of SNCF’s core business processes. Are you surprised ? I’m not.
The short-term results of the pilot project seem to speak for themselves:
76,486 visits in a couple of months
An average of 2,000 visits a day
331,606 pages seen
Average time spent on the platform is 2.30 minutes
A community of 1,560 users
1,210 questions and 233 answers
Via debats.sncf.com customers asked questions mainly about services and pricing, and provided a wide range of feedback, while SNCF through its staff asked questions in order to solicit customers’ advice and better understand what kinds of new features and services customers were wanting or looking for.
It also became the de facto source for current information, such as:
Jan. 24 strikes announced
Users worried about the impact on their daily journey
Seeking for information on Google
Opinion & Debate is users’ first choice
Opinion & Debate at the 1st rank of Google query
Daily updated content
Free referencing campaign
A key source of official information from and about SNCF
Web users go to the platform
Find answers
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All in all, the pilot project was deemed successful enough to make it a permanent feature of the SNCF web site.
Now SNCF can legitimately state that it is a company that has experienced, appreciated and will continue to learn from being in dynamic interaction with its current and potential customers … thanks to the Web.
Jeremiah Owyang, a web strategist / analyst at Forrester whom many know as an energetic voice in the area of Enterprise 2.0, points to a new initiative (Change.Force.com – A Citizen’s Briefing Book) by the Obama administration. In the first few paragraphs of his analysis, he states that in his exchanges with executives he is experiencing more openness to the use of social technologies, and hence of some greater degree of transparency with customers, employees and other stakeholders.
A Wisdom of Crowds tactic being adopted by the new administration … interesting idea, we’ll see how it plays out.
I just learned from Leverage’s Mike Walsh that Obama will receive a briefing from the top voted ideas that were submitted by the American people each evening see Change.Force.com (a play off) . This method of keeping in direct communication by ‘listening’ to the citizens leans on voting style technology similar to Dell’s Ideastorm. My colleague Josh Bernoff will be pleased, as he requested this feature a few months ago.
You’ll need to login and register (I suspect they can use IP addresses to determine point of origin within US) in order to confirm location but that’s not completely accurate. How can Obama extend this further? Make a similar site for all other nations to submit ideas for foreign policy. This doesn’t come without challenges of course, the system could be gamed, and there’s no promise he’ll make changes based on our feedback, we’ll see.
I talk to the executives of the world’s largest brands, after Obama won the election, I get a lot less push back –it’s rare I have to have discussions now about the validity of social technologies.
Of course, social technologies still come with risk, but for some reason this feels really good, we’re all a bit more connected and the internet helps to bring us together.
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I’m not surprised. if I were the leader of an organisation, I would just get on with it, as it seems clear to me that the permanent and ubiquitous presence of the Web in our lives is creating what is effectively a new sociology of expectation, namely of at least having a voice and to some degree being "heard" by hierarchical leaders in our societies’ institutions.
Hot on the heels of our several posts on the article about Cisco in Fast Company, I just ran across this video from a presentation and Q&A he carried out at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
My emphasis below … I am reminded of Euan Semple’s classic post about implementing social computing (The 100% guaranteed easiest way to do Enterprise 2.0?), and I don’t doubt that one of, if not the, the hardest part is senior managers and executives getting used to the idea of less or different control.
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Cisco is undoubtedly a lab for E2.0, and Chambers is definitely in the pilot’s seat. His point about collaboration revolves around productivity and speed.
My attention was drawn by a couple of things he said, such as the new ability of the company to pursue 26 top priority projects at the same time instead of just one or two last year; or the fact that Chambers meets more customers now but less often face-to-face and more often virtually, less often one-on-one and more often as a group; or the fact that he had to get rid of 20% of his staff composed of control freaks who didn’t get it.
Chambers believes that communities are the very core of E2.0, and he admits that he had a hard time getting used to it.
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Based on Cisco’s own experience in the past several years, organizations will completely restructure around these new capabilities. Indeed, he offers up his company as a paradigm of this vision. Once a hierarchical, command and control-based organization, Cisco is now much flatter, a company running “off of social networking groups.” Councils with cross-functional responsibilities suggest and take on many more projects (from emerging markets, to video, and smart grid boards); from one to two major ventures per year, to this year’s 26 launches.
The next generation company is “built around the visual.” Cisco employees do non-stop teleconferencing with collaborators around the world. The company hosts 2500 such virtual meetings per week. It also employs Webex, Wikis and blogging to move work along.
With this kind of communication and carefully managed process to match, “operations can be turned on a head,” says Chambers. It’s the recipe for market-dominating speed and scale. Chambers is “loading the pipeline” with projects that assume other companies will want what Cisco has and makes.
“If we’re right, we’re developing a huge wave of revenue opportunity.” Perhaps this is one reason why he’s “an optimist on global productivity, global economy and our ability to handle the challenges.”
The following notes are an opinion piece, not a rigorously researched and articulated article.
I have just had the opportunity to spend a week in Paris, meeting and talking with the team at blueKiwi, under the leadership of Carlos Diaz and Christophe Rouitheau, two dynamic and intelligent young French entrepreneurs. They and their team, thanks to live-wire Bertrand Duperrin, invited me and Stowe Boyd to speak at the launch of the 2009 version of blueKiwi collaborative platform.
I’ve also had the chance to connect with several young French entrepreneurs who are helping to raise the bar regarding the mass customisation (or personalization) of knowledge work with their application Personall.”.
Additionally, I’ve had the pleasure to meet and discuss with Dr. Miguel Membrado (co-founder of several leading search and collaboration related software applications), David Guillocheau and Patrice Malaurie of Talentys, and Philippe Colin of Itexium, an IT strategy and implementation consulting boutique. There’s even an Enterprise 2.0 Institute at the Grenoble Ecole de Management, headed by Richard Collin
France has a long history and reputation of hierarchical organizations headed by (generally) imperial and autocratic top management (at least, I believe that’s a reasonable way of phrasing their reputations seen from a North American point of view. I am certainly no expert in macro-economics but am aware of the general belief that France needs some economic revitalization (who doesn’t, these days ?) and that some of that has to do with its organizations and their structures and methods. However, France’s companies and economy still produce(s) some very interesting products and services, the country has healthy financial and medical care and educational systems
But .. and I believe this an important “but” … France also has a very well educated work force (compared to the North American workforce), a culture that enjoys examining and discussing issues (they cannot help themselves ), and workplace cultural habits that encourage and reinforce teamwork. In addition, in no small part due to the maturing of the EU, there are young people from all over western and eastern Europe living and working, and contributing their brainpower and energy, to the workplace in France.
Additionally, the social culture in France is essentially based on discourse, examination of ideas, arguing in friendly (mostly) ways about almost any issue under the sun. I believe that makes fertile ground for the enracination (taking root of) using social computing to build more responsive and effective knowledge workplaces than was possible before. It allows for the best parts of the French mindset and culture to flourish, on purpose.
We bloggers with a strong interest in Enterprise 2.0 and who carry out research and practice consulting, strategizing, theorizing, or coaching tend to believe that social computing in the workplace is inevitably tomorrow’s foundation for knowledge work. According to almost any theory, its use along with the inputs of factual information and decent brainpower should lead to increases in intellectual capital, organizational capability and thus enhanced productivity over time. If this is the case, then it’s my belief that France’s workplaces of the future should be interesting places should the stereotypical dependence on elite autocracy and its orientation towards hierarchy be reduced.
If the traditional reliance on top-down dynamics can be viewed with a critical eye, and if France’s leaders of tomorrow can bring themselves to adapt to th e new leadership style(s) born of listening, sensing and helping interdependent systems respond to the ongoing rapid changes we face today, then France has a lot of potential with which to work with regard to the promise(s) of Enterprise 2.0.
Be sure not to miss our interview series with several dozen attendees of FASTforward'09, including all the contributors to this blog, as well as Clay Shirky, Charlene Li, and many other notable thinkers and doers. The interviews are tagged and can be accessed by topic.
FASTforward Blog Guide to Twitter
Check out the first of a series of guides to the 2.0 world from the contributors of the FASTforward Blog. This and future FASTforward Blog guides aim to deepen understanding about topics we think critical to the future of the enterprise and how people and organizations communicate, collaborate, innovate, and more.
In this guide, Robert Paterson weaves together the many posts that have been written on the FASTforward blog about Twitter, the groundbreaking application that has attracted millions of users and is changing the way they provide, gather, and share information and insights.
On September 29 from 1-2 p.m. EST, the FASTforward blog hosted a great conversation with Beth Simone Noveck, US Deputy Chief Technology Officer for Open Government and Andrew Rasiej, the co-founder of the Personal Democracy Forum, an annual conference and website covering the intersection of politics and technology.
Highlights of the discussion, which touched on issues of transparency, collaboration, risk management and more, are available here.
FASTforward 08 Video Coverage
Be sure to catch dozens of great interviews from last year's FASTforward. Among the topics discussed between host Jerry Michalski and the speakers, panelists, attendees, and contributors to this blog: enterprise 2.0, search, the user revolution, the future of content, and much, much more.
This site is a companion blog to the FASTforward conference and summit series and is sponsored by FAST, A Microsoft Subsidiary. The blog, like the conference series, aims to drive and deepen conversation about how today’s companies can use technology to place users in control of information, and is home to ongoing discussion about the user revolution and Enterprise 2.0 opportunities and challenges. More info here...
), and workplace cultural habits that encourage and reinforce teamwork. In addition, in no small part due to the maturing of the EU, there are young people from all over western and eastern Europe living and working, and contributing their brainpower and energy, to the workplace in France.
