Over the past two days in Denver at Defrag, the most compelling presentation (in my mind) was delivered this morning by Andrew McAfee, in the morning keynote. Ross Mayfield (congrats Ross on the new funding and CEO 2.0) gives a great account of the presentation. However, it was one particular item he discussed that was a hidden gem.
In his presentation, Andrew talked about the need (maybe) to articulate an ROI for bringing Web 2.0 tools to the enterprise. Andrew's comment was that "CIO's are getting tired of looking at the 300% ROI on the bottom of each proposal, and simply want to know how the value is going to be delivered." I blogged about ROI's earlier this year, and couldn't agree more with Andrew and his approach.
One interesting thought about Andrew's approach is simply this: here's a noted academic (not start up CEO) making the case to avoid the ROI trap. He's not suggesting you ignore the value add or cultural changes these technologies can and will bring, on the contrary it's clear he believes they will offer great value, it just won't arise out of some formula driven approach. Unique benefits to unique sets of circumstances, industry by industry, company by company.
That brings me to the example he shared for the audience. One non-technical, traditional business (a resort builder I believe he said) had started using blogs internally. One of the engineers responsible for pouring concrete floors had discovered a way to reduce the cost of that project by $500,000, simply by taking an alternative approach. Rather than sitting on that info, this engineer blogged about the success, which was then viewed by others (not part of his formal network) asking for more details, etc... While blogging did not create the initial savings, blogging did immediately open up that savings to many others, in a way/forum that was easy to share. The downstream savings for the company and it's customers could be enormous.
Sure, one example, but I really believe there are many like this that go unannounced. I applaud Andrew for taking the more unconventional route to establishing the value, rather than simply expecting the same ROI analysis everyone talks about.
Each one of these tacit interactions that are enhanced, or as I previously blogged, more effective interactions, help to create the sustainable corporate advantages every firm should be seeking to capitalize on. Stuff that in an ROI spreadsheet.
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