Making the Business Case for Enterprise 2.0: An London Accountant’s Advice

Measuring return on investment on many enterprise 2.0 initiatives can be difficult. However, it is also very useful for a variety of reasons.  The business case should ensure that the success measures are in line with the enterprise’s overall business strategy. Consideration of the costs and benefits are essential in order to make sure the initiative is successful and delivers what is needed. It can also provide concrete evidence of the value to support further investment. I have done many ROI analyses over the years and am convinced they are more of an art than science. However, I also always try to work with the organization’s finance people to both ensure the effort is aligned with how similar efforts are done and to gain credibility with senior decision makers. This is where the finance function can make a significant contribution.

In order to help finance professionals make the case for their organizations use of web 2.0, Chartered Institute of Management Accountants in London has created guidelines for framing business cases.  These guidelines help management accountants through the decision making process and identify the use of tried and tested techniques to help organizations make the right decisions and measure their return on investment. 

The report is appropriately titled, Beyond enthusiasm: making the business case for your organization’s use of Web 2.0.  While they are certainly not the same, I think the report will be useful for both Web 2.0 and enterprise 2.0 efforts. Louise Ross authored the report. 

Here is a blog post she wrote about the effort, More than enthusiasm for web 2.0.  Louise wrote that she did this report to bring an accountant’s perspective to the issue. I certainly applaud this view. She also did the report to “to share my desk research, and collect together cases of web 2.0 implementations to give others an idea of potential benefits and pitfalls. Management need to be reassured that implementing web 2.0 doesn't have to be a blind leap of faith. Given evidence about others' experiences, and guidance on how to deal with rather unpredictable outcomes, it's perfectly possible to construct a business case for web 2.0 as it is for any other investment.” These are more wise words.

The report begins with a quote, “technology can serve as a bridge, never a destination.” I like it already.  It contains twenty cases and looks at successes and failures. It ends with a framework for constructing business cases.  Louise acknowledges that while it can be difficult in finding benchmarks for a new technology such as Web 2.0, that is no excuse to not determine the business case. She adds that accountants are trained to deal with varying qualities of data and how to present them to senior management. She concludes that making a Web 2.0 case for Web 2.0 is not essentially different from other efforts, it does pose special challenges in the areas of control, governance, and risk management.  Louise also feels that the greatest benefit from Web 2.0 is encouraging collaboration. To that end she requests comments about the report on her blog. I did try to do this but it appears that you have to be registered with the CIMA to make a comment.  That is my only fault with the effort so far. 

I look forward to reading the details with greater care but wanted to share this with you so you can do the same. 

Comments

[Julian Elve]

@Bill Thanks for pointing to this - I've downloaded the paper and once you accept the audience is accountants it makes a useful read. Through my own lens of being focused on how to define and realise benefits from programmes of change, I think Louise has touched on a lot of key points, I think the paper could be improved by addressing the usefulness of benefits maps to link the benefits with the necessary behaviour changes as well as technology enablers.

Shame that CIMA don't follow her advice and make it so hard to comment. I tried signing up to their site, but the process fell over at various places, and indeed some pages seem to suggest that you can only sign up to comment if you are a CIMA member!

[bill Ives]

Julian - Thanks for your comment. I agree about the CIMA site as I tried to comment and found I could not either. Bill