Today my colleague Brigitte Ricou-Bellan published an e-book on the Return on Intelligence, and I wanted to follow up that wonderful piece with a post. The topic of the piece couldn’t be more timely – how to justify the investment in knowledge and information management solutions. Today more than ever as organizations are cutting costs, these kind of solutions come under scrutiny. Many times they are viewed as a nice to have, but not a necessity. The e-book tackles two different means to help prove value.

First there is the case study from Accenture on determining a tangible ROI. In Accenture’s case, time-savings was used to show a $25-1 return on investment in knowledge management solutions. In the e-book they also discuss some of the other factors that could have been used, such as increased sales, increased quality, decreased costs, etc. 

Determining a tangible ROI is of course invaluable, but something that can often be time-consuming and difficult to do however. I believe the real opportunity is to begin to change the perception around information management solutions. The fact of the matter is that when deployed and managed effectively these solutions can provide distinct competitive advantage, customer intamicy, and operational efficiencies. All of which are critical in any economic climate, but essential a down economy. 

But how do we change the perception of solutions like Factiva from Dow Jones? Take a moment to think about some of the strategic initiatives in your organization. Is there one to manage risk in your supply chain? Perhaps one to reduce the cost of sales? Maybe to grow presence in an emerging market? Projects and objectives like these often have a return on investment associated with them and are perceived to be mission critical. Fortunately, initiatives like these are fueled by information from both inside and outside the enterprise firewall. Having access to reliable and timely information can be the difference between a good decision and a bad one. 

Think about the different conversations you can have with your constituents that use your IM or KM solutions. Don’t talk about the number of employees that receive “News Alerts”. Instead discuss the benefit of a “Daily Supply Chain Risk Dashboard”, and how it is a key factor in the success of your companies Supply Chain initiatives. Both come from the same tool, but are perceived completely differently.

So what initiatives in your organization can be improved by the availability of reliable, accurate, and timely information? What projects will be made better by a tool that enables knowledge curation of all manner of information, and social intelligence? More importantly perhaps, which ones already are?

So instead of spending time justifying the investments you have made, take some time to understand the importance of those investments to your organizations strategic goals. Find use cases of IM solutions doing so today in your company. Evangalise how a down economy is when you need to invest more than ever in creating competitive advantage, customer intamicy, and operational efficiency. Convince your company about the value of the Return on Intelligence. Intelligence that you, your team, and your solutions are delivering to your constituents.

For the many reading this who have done so, I encourage you to share your stories here and take the poll in the sidebar! Remember, this blog isn’t a one way communication vehicle for me, it is a community for transforming information into intelligence. Kudos to Brigitte and the DJ team for giving us a such a great topic to discuss.

- Ken