ROI of implementations of Social Technology: Chriscar SharePoint project.

Hello and welcome to a new post!
In this post we will explore the real business of social tools and the revenue it generates for organisations. This post discusses several issues including tangible and tangible benefits for a company that undertakes Microsoft SharePoint 2013 Project. The post also examines return on investment (ROI) calculation for a fictitious company known as Chriscar Enterprises. Chriscar Enterprises is a communication and Internet service provider headquartered in Cupertino, California. The company undertakes its projects using SharePoint 2010 project.

Lets start with this informative video that explains the idea of  SharePoint :

Source: CommonCraft (2009)

Chriscar SharePoint 2013 Project Implementation

       As a communication and Internet service provider, Chriscar Enterprises largely rely on the use of social media platform to provide its services effectively to its consumers. The company had faced several problems prior to the implementation of SharePoint 2013. Among the problems the company had experienced include frequent loss of vital clients’ information, increasing traffic in the customer service lines, and frequent loss of emails. Other challenges included increasing operating cost and increased network downtime. Following the existence of these problems, Chriscar Enterprise decided to implement this social platform in order to reduce network downtime, improve its messaging and customer care services, improve collaboration among employees, and to monitor closely employee’s activities.

Tangible Benefits

    Tangible benefits are measurable benefits in which money or dollar value can be assigned. In the case of Chriscar Company, benefits used in calculating ROI include sales increase, reduced network downtime, and production increase (Dickson, 2003). Firstly, for Chriscar Company, sales increase is likely to be facilitated by efficiency in service delivery following the implementation of SharePoint 2013. Measurement of efficiency, therefore, is largely reflected through increased sales in terms of dollars. On the other hand, it is easy to attach monetary value through production increase because SharePoint is capable of increasing team collaboration and productivity. Through team collaboration, the production of services at the company has largely increased significantly. All these measurements can be easily measured with a number and for that reason; a company can evaluate them by collecting and analyzing statistical information.

Intangible Benefits

  Intangible benefits, on the other hand, are those benefits that a monetary value cannot be attached to them. These intangible benefits may include improved teamwork, reduced complaints, increased organizational commitment, improved customer service, and increased job satisfaction. SharePoint 2013 facilitates the improvement of work through provision of effective team collaboration platform. When workers work together, their productivity increases; hence resulting in team improvement. Therefore, while no monetary value cannot be attached to improved teamwork, it is important that it should be included during ROI calculation because it is directly associated with the selected technology. SharePoint 2013 also provides increased job satisfaction and improved delivery of customer care service through enhancement of team collaboration and communication. Since both of these benefits are associated with SharePoint, it is highly necessary that they should be incorporated in ROI calculation. Therefore, though benefits may also be known as nonmonetary benefits, the study will attach a dollar value to them in order to facilitate the calculation of ROI for the company.

Measuring of the Cost:

       The following table provides the full cost for implementing the social platform

Measuring of the benefits

Calculation of ROI

Return on Investment (ROI) refers to a measure of performance used in the evaluation of the efficiency of an investment (Lloret and María, 2011; Leiva, 2012).ROI is given by the following formula:

ROI = {(benefits from Investment - investment cost) / investment cost} × 100

{(1,800,000 – 1,380,000)/1,380,000} × 100

30.43%

Strength and Weaknesses

       In conclusion, several strengths and weaknesses exist in regards to this case study. Firstly, in regards to strength, the implementation of SharePoint platform facilitated not only efficiency at the company, but also improved delivery of services, improved customer care and messaging services, and reduced network time. On the other hand, the main weakness of this case study is that most of the benefits achieved are intangible benefits. It is extremely difficult to attack the dollar value to intangible benefits. For that reason, the case study relied mainly on estimates.

Leave me a comment tell me what you think of this ROI plan, and Thank you for passing by.

REFERENCES:

Common Craft. (2009, Aug 13). Video: Wikis in Plain English  [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s12Jb5Z2xaE

Dickinson, G. (2003). SharePoint. S.l.: Virtual Training Co.

Lloret, R. and María, N.(2011).ROI. Measuring the social media return on investment in a library.The Bottom Line, 24(2), pp.145 - 151. Retrived from http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/08880451111169223

Leiva, F. (2012). Improving the Effectiveness of Advertising in Internet Social Networking. International Journal of Information Security and Privacy, 6(2), pp.1-15. Retrived from http://www.igi-global.com/chapter/improving-effectiveness-advertising-internet-social/60341