Google Apps, a positive ROI solution to patient care

TVR Communications are the largest provider of interactive patient education and entertainment devices in the United States. With large advances in the healthcare market, competition has increased significantly for TVR in terms of both technological sophistication and pricing. As such, in order to continue to deliver state of the art products whilst remaining cost-competitive, TVR had to find a way to reduce costs in other areas of the business.

Internal communication within TVR had been via traditional methods until 2007, with telephone being the primary communication and collaboration tool within the business. TVR had also been using the same dated Microsoft Exchange email platform since it was introduced in 1999. It was only once this Exchange platform started running out of disk space that TVR began looking at upgrading this system. 

It was found that upgrading the Exchange platform would have been costly, so TVR began investigating cheaper alternatives and arrived at a decision to use Google Apps. TVR had two goals in mind when making this decision: 

1. Reduce costs associated with licensing and hardware (tangible benefit).
2. Reduce risk of downtime since Google is a reputable firm (intangible benefit).

Not only were these initial goals achieved, but so were several other unforeseen benefits also:

• IT staff productivity was increased as staff no longer had to spend time managing, archiving and backing up email addresses (intangible benefit).

• Collaboration was improved, as employees were able to communicate and work on documents together in real-time even if they were in separate locations. This not only reduced costs, but also improved worker productivity (tangible/intangible benefit).

• Interaction with customers increased, as it provided an additional channel to quickly and efficiently respond to request for proposals (tangible benefit). 

A study by Nucleus Research found that total benefits from this project amassed to $284,000 with 79% of this total being from direct or tangible benefits and 21% from indirect or intangible benefits as seen below.

The costs of $50,787 associated with this project were accrued in three key areas: 

• Software, which was for the most part licensing costs and accounted for 54% of total costs.

• Personnel, all of which were internal employees charged with implementing the applications and migrating data. This accounted for 23% of costs.

• The remaining 23% of total costs was attributed to training employees in how to securely and efficiently use this new platform.

 Nucleus Research calculated an annual ROI for this project, along with a Net Present Value (NPV) and payback period. This is detailed below:

As can be seen, the implementation of Google Apps has been extremely beneficial for TVR with a 500% annual ROI. Even without considering the indirect benefits, this project still resulted in a 380% annual ROI.

Nucleus Research conducted a very thorough ROI analysis and it is difficult to fault. Of course, the estimates of intangible benefit values are subjective and the ROI would change accordingly depending on how much value is attributed to these intangible benefits.

In addition to the ROI calculations, Nucleus Research has provided an NPV calculation using a discount rate or cost-of-capital of 15%. They found this figure to be an astounding $97,244; finance theory suggests that management take on any project that results in a positive NPV as this represents actual value added to a firm. If any more reassurance as to the success of this project is required the payback period for the project was a mere one month!

All in all, this comprehensive ROI analysis conducted by Nucleus Research speaks volumes for the cost saving and productivity enhancing capabilities of emerging social technologies. In a world where the lines between business and technology are becoming increasingly blurred, solid financial analysis of social technology benefits such as this are no longer only beneficial but necessary.

Question for my readers: If you were an analyst charged with quantifying the benefits associated with productivity efficiencies resulting from increased collaboration, how would you go about doing so?

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OzContacts, a local social technology success story!

OzContacts is an online retailer of contact lenses and related items that began locally in Milton and has now grown to be the fourth largest online retailer in this category. Social technologies have had a large part to play in the success of this company since its humble beginnings in 2009. Particular functional areas at OzContacts that have the most to gain through use of social technologies are "marketing and sales" and "customer service".

What truly separates OzContacts from the competition is customer service that goes above and beyond that which is expected by the customer. One way OzContacts achieves this is through the implementation of Zopim live chat software on their website.

Zopim is a Singapore startup that specialises in providing a live chat platform that can be easily integrated into any website. Additionally, Zopim works well with several other customer-focused applications such as Netsuite and Highrise. Through providing instant online chat to customers using this technology, OzContacts has effectively succeeded in using social technologies to provide customer care, one of the ten value levers outlined in a report by the McKinsey Global Institute. In addition to allowing customers to speak to a real person without picking up a phone, Zopim provides location and device information as well as tracking how a customer arrived at the website. This information allows OzContacts customer service representatives to derive greater insight into the customer from the beginning of the chat.

The CRM system OzContacts currently has in place is Netsuite. Since OzContacts is a business in the growth stage, they could greatly benefit from purchasing the marketing automation extension available to assist with the generation and fostering of sales leads.

The benefits of a system such as this is allowing for potential sales leads to be automatically generated from the company website; these leads can be identified according to multiple pre-identified criteria, including customer insights obtained via Drupal chat. This makes a lot more sense than simply cold calling, for a business that has built its reputation on having an exceptional customer experience. 

Lastly, OzContacts is using popular social networking site Facebook as an extremely effective tool for marketing communication/interaction.

Whilst being only a small company with limited external visibility, OzContacts has garnered more than 4,000 likes on Facebook thus far. In addition to using Facebook as a method to market to both old and new customers, OzContacts also uses Facebook as a medium for providing customer care.

Question for my readers: Have you ever used an online chat function before, either as a customer or retailer? If so, did you find it to be positive or negative experience in comparison to a phone call?

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Value Creation in Business Support Functions at Unilever

The value creation opportunities for consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies afforded by social technologies is enormous. A study by the McKinsey Global Institute found that these technologies have the potential to create between $212-308 billion in value potential annually within the global CPG sector alone. Approximately $36-46 billion of this figure is derived solely from application of social technologies to business support functions.

One company that has recognised and harnessed this value creating potential is multinational consumer goods corporation Unilever, who are applying social technologies externally in their talent recruitment process and internally via their custom-built social collaboration platform based on the Salesforce platform.

Social Media and Recruitment at Unilever:

Unilever use a variety of digital media outlets to source and match talent to positions globally. These include:

• The global careers website;
• a LinkedIn company page;
• a careers Facebook page;
• a careers YouTube channel;
• and a Careers Twitter feed

The careers website provides two separate links for graduates/students and professionals. It is worth noting the use of the keywords 'opportunities' in the graduate section and 'vacancies' in the professionals section. It can be inferred that Unilever is using the careers website to advertise a long-term career opportunity to students and graduates, as opposed to a position for professionals who have been working within the industry for some time.

Unilever's LinkedIn page is extremely popular with over 500,000 followers which may come as no surprise given the company's global reach and reputation, however in an interview with Global Resourcing Director, Paul Maxin, he revealed that by rolling out buttons in email signatures they went from "40,000 followers to about 235,000 in a period of 10 months". Over this period, Unilever also experienced an exponential increase in page visits and a significant increase in new hires from LinkedIn.

The Unilever Facebook page is also extremely popular with over 200,000 'likes'. Whilst, this page might have a universal URL, the content is specific for each country/region from which an individual is viewing it, thus ensuring this resource is relevant to the user.

The Unilever Careers YouTube channel features a unique 'How far could U go?' branding, however conforms to their Facebook strategy of having country specific channels, relevant to the user. Across all 20 country-based channels, Unilever has amassed an astounding figure of over 200,000 views. Clearly, this video sharing platform has much merit from an organisational recruitment perspective and is useful for more than just the sharing of funny cat videos.

Unilever does not yet have an Australian careers Twitter feed, but has since late August of last year had a global careers Twitter feed which has yet to really take off. However, with 500 followers at this point in time, it serves as a good back up to the other social media channels in widening Unilever's ability to source and match talent.

Through combination of universal and local social technology mediums, Unilever is truly a world leader in 'Glocal' recruitment. Through enhancing the opportunity for talent to hear about current opportunities, Unilever has a much greater chance of finding the right person for the job and taking advantage of the value creation afforded by social technologies.

Internal Collaboration at Unilever:

With marketers, brand managers and partners spread across 190 different countries, Unilever has much to gain from the increases in efficiency that could be attained through implementation of an internal social collaboration tool.  Global management consultancy firm Accenture was hired to develop and implement a digital social platform based on the Salesforce platform that also integrated Salesforce's chatter.

This new platform was developed in a mere 12 weeks and has enabled Unilever's 7,500 marketers to quickly and efficiently share "knowledge, best practices and creative assets across the network". Just like the Salesforce platform, Unilever's platform creates value through enhanced collaboration by providing staff with a secure, central hub for access of resources and collective knowledge.

Question for my Readers: Have you ever used YouTube to learn more about a company's career opportunities? If so, what advantages/disadvantages do you feel this format has in comparison to conventional written job descriptions?

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Social Tools in Action!

As many of us who have experience in the work force would know, the constant barrage of communication never stops. Email has gone from being one of the most efficient methods of communication, to one of the most time consuming activities in a professional's day. Luckily there are solutions to this issue in the form of new communication tools such as Yammer and Asana. In this post I will be taking a look at companies that have taken advantage of modern social tools and how these examples tie in with pertinent Enterprise 2.0 theory.

Case Study 1: Yammer at Capgemini

The first example of Enterprise 2.0 in action that I would like to present is the introduction of social messaging tool Yammer to Capgemini, a multinational IT consultancy firm. 

The Capgemini example ties in well with the four enterprise 2.0 benefit dimensions outlined by Dawson (2008). 

• Productivity & Efficiency
• Knowledge
• Reputation
• Staff Engagement

In an article posted to the London Business School 'Business Strategy Review' blog by Julian Birkinshaw 'What happens when social networking collides with the corporate Intranet?' it is highlighted that prior to Yammer, Capgemini solely utilised a corporate intranet that was centralised and hierarchical. Through experimentation and eventual slow adoption of Yammer alongside the current intranet, Capgemini has successfully decentralised their internal communication channel, engaging and drawing upon the knowledge of the "collective consciousness of the 20,000 people who subscribe to Yammer internally."

Whilst it may first come to mind, that the blurring of boundaries between work and play could negatively affect worker productivity and efficiency, the opposite effect has been seen to occur. The self-governing nature of threads on Capgemini's Yammer tool, has proven to effectively prevent or stop threads that are becoming too 'play' oriented. The media attention resulting from the immediate success of Capgemini's Yammer implementation has also boosted the reputation of the firm not only in the eyes of industry partners and competitors, but prospective employees also.

Case Study 2: Ben and Jerry's 'Do the World a Flavor'

In 2006, Tapscott & Williams defined 'prosumers' in their book 'Wikinomics' as companies that engage in the blending of consumers and producers. A prime example of a prosumer is Ben and Jerry's, an American ice cream company that exports globally. 

As a global exporter, Ben and Jerry's had great reach when conducting their 2010 'Do the world a flavor' competition. Amy-Mae Elliot from Mashable spoke with Head of PR from Ben and Jerry's Sean Greenwood about this people-powered venture in Crowdsourcing Case Studies. The hugely successful competition that focused on raising awareness of Ben and Jerry's use of fair trade ingredients, garnered 10,000 new flavour ideas from the US alone. When asked why they went to the public with this campaign, Greenwood replied with 'It's always a tremendous opportunity to tap into our fan's passions and creativity'. This statement speaks volumes for wikinomics business methodologies, as in my opinion no staged marketing surveys or focus groups can compete with the telling information derived from the collective conscious of the crowd working together to achieve a common goal.

Case Study 3: iChing at Yum Brands

The implementataion of 'Jive' based social tool iChing at Yum! Brands, the parent company of KFC, Pizza Hut etc., has proven very successful and fits in well with the S.L.A.T.E.S. paradigm outline by McAfee in 2006 Enterprise 2.0: The Dawn of Emergent Collaboration. 

This stands for: 

• Search 
• Links
• Authoring
• Tags
• Extensions
• Signals

To ensure that the 6,000 back office workers across 600 different groups could easily retrieve the information they required, a search function was absolutely necessary on Yum! Brand's new social networking tool, especially when you consider the amount of information that has been gathered over the years in such a large organisation. This is where developing a tool that is based on an already existent system, such as 'Jive', becomes so important, as a common search interface tool that has been tried and tested was easily put in place for their custom system.

Likewise, a links option in the navigation menu, was implemented much like in Jive, which allows for users to set links to relevant information in their posts. Much like 'Jive', 'iChing' is based around user-generated blogs, wikis and discussions. This authoring component of iChing, is a key driver in employee participation. The tag functionality embedded in the system enhances the 'search' interface immensely. Through users creating tags on their own posts, the search functionality becomes much more meaningful and powerful, as it does not rely on the centralised setting of keywords. 

Also, built into 'iChing' is RSS capability, which is also derived from 'Jive'. This RSS capability improves search capability further as employees do not have to sift through tags and search results to see new posts that are of relevance to them, as it will be signalled to them in a simple 'news feed' format. This RSS feed is yet another good example of why deriving your platform from an already existing tool, such as 'Jive' is so beneficial, as the implementation of effective RSS capability from software would be a challenging and expensive process.

As can be seen, Web 2.0 applications and ideologies are now well embedded in modern organisations and there are multiple existing tools and platforms available to those organisations that do not wish to be left behind. I leave you my readers with a question to consider....

Question for my Readers:  With open innovation and crowd-sourcing being so convenient and economical in today's digital age, are the traditional marketing techniques of surveys and focus groups becoming obsolete?

References:

Dawson, R. (2008). Implementing Enterprise 2.0. San Francisco; Sydney: Advanced Human Technologies.

Tapscott, D. & Williams, A. (2006). Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything. New York: Portfolio.

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