Hi All

I was looking to speak to other professional services firms that have implemented KM, specially around their marketing and business development practices. I'm building a business case for a project within my firm and would like to be able to demonstrate how this is being done elsewhere.

Would anyone be up for a chat?

Thank you!
Cristina.

Cristina SS Whelan

Head of Knowledge and Insights, Marketing and Business Development

Grant Thornton UK LLP

Instead of ROI you can say a cost avoidance. It shows a direct link to the bottom line. Just a different way of saying something, I saved 8 hours per person on a project or There was a 8 hour cost avoidance per person on the project. avoidance speaks higher.

ROI is if I bought a new thingamajig and was trying to recoup costs. Avoidance means I got to save that money.

John Antill

MCKM CKS IA KT

MLS KM Student

256-541-1229

On Tue, Nov 10, 2020 at 12:39 PM Frank Guerino via groups.io <frank.guerino=if4it.com@groups.io> wrote:

Hi Stephen,

 

You wrote: “The problem with the idea of going back and checking ROI against actual achievement is that ROI is simply a flawed metric in low-frequency, high-variability situations. It's not a matter of how "mature" you are, there will never be enough data -- measured directly.”

 

Agreed.  This is the plight of measuring ROI.  If your data is good, you can get to very good ROI assessments.  If it’s not, you’re at the other end of the spectrum, where you use (mostly educated but still) SWAGs.  The quality of the data you can pump back into your iterative feedback loop dictates the quality of your final calculations (as is the case with any similar algorithm).

 

My Best,

Frank

--

Frank Guerino, Principal Managing Partner

The International Foundation for Information Technology (IF4IT)
http://www.if4it.com
1.908.294.5191 (M)

Guerino1_Skype (S)

 

 

From: <main@SIKM.groups.io> on behalf of Stephen Bounds <km@...>
Reply-To: <main@SIKM.groups.io>
Date: Friday, November 6, 2020 at 9:16 PM
To: <main@SIKM.groups.io>
Subject: Re: [SIKM] KM ROI #question

 

Hi Frank,

The problem with the idea of going back and checking ROI against actual achievement is that ROI is simply a flawed metric in low-frequency, high-variability situations. It's not a matter of how "mature" you are, there will never be enough data -- measured directly. At best, solutions will be interpreted as "successful" or "failed" because of survivorship bias, not because of any inherent soundness to the decisions being taken.

A simple scenario: A company identifies that poor processes are sometimes leading to litigation and multi-million dollar payouts. They put in place a you-beaut technology which promises to improve these processes.

The very next year they lose another major suit in court again. "This is rubbish," the executives decide, and the project is canned. Now under the hood their risk has actually decreased 90% -- in reality, it was the best possible thing to do -- but because of that one high-value realisation of risk early, the ROI looks terrible.

As the frequency of events goes up, the more likely you are to establish a cluster of outcomes that can you can use to actively manage your organisation and determine whether process improvements are working. This is necessarily less certain than directly monitoring and adjusting to the results of a high volume of outcomes, but if this is not possible your best bet is to:

• seek a high-volume metric that strongly correlates with high-value risk outcomes (caveat caveat, Hawthorne effect etc)
• estimate an RROI on options to change that metric in a positive way

If even this isn't possible in a cost-effective way, the most rational choice of action is to simply ignore that the risk exists. Which describes more small businesses than you might think 😊

Cheers,
Stephen.

====================================

Stephen Bounds

Executive, Information Management

Cordelta

E: stephen.bounds@...

M: 0401 829 096

====================================

On 7/11/2020 3:16 am, Frank Guerino wrote:

Hi Stephen,

 

You wrote: “Any time you are seeking to implement an intangible benefit, or at least a strategy which will have an impact one degree or more away from a direct financial return (this mostly, but not always equates to marketing and/or brand reputation)”

 

1. I agree (more so with brand recognition/reputation than marketing, such as in the case of direct marketing, where such investments can still be correlated with impacts on sales revenue). 

 

Re: #1: Agreed.  DR is a very strong example.  However, even things like DR often still can and do get clearly written into bottom line expenses (deductibles) that can be measured against revenues for overall profits and ROIs.  DR ROI can be measured against time to recover, costs to recover, lost revenue for time down, etc., and they often are.

 

Re: #2: Saying that such items are “fatally” flawed may be a bit dramatic but I get your point.  The reality is that, where accurate measuring is not achievable, honest and competent people make their assessments based on educated guesses that they can often explain.

 

In short, I think that we agree on the premise that there is a science to ROI math that often bleeds into an art which drives how we come up with some of the numbers which we plug into our math.  In the cases where measurements cannot be accurate, educated guesses and even SWAGs often get reviewed and adjusted for improvements.   As I stated in my response to Matt, in the U.S. the key is to be consistent, leverage independent auditors (or other competent reviewers) to help stay within the guidelines of critical constraints set by your internal organizations like compliance or your external organizations like the U.S.’s IRS.

 

In the case of measurement against revenue generation, ROI is a live and constantly changing metric so there is constant oversight and re-evaluation.  In the case of DR, we often see the reality that very few organizations go back and measure the accuracy of their initial investments against their real costs and their down times & recovery times of their disasters because disasters are few and far between.  Only the most advanced organizations seem to.  Those that are not so mature simply suck up the costs of recovering and somehow role those costs into bottom line expenses (even if not clear as to why).

 

In the end, even “maturity” is a function of ROI.

 

My Best,

 

Frank

--

Frank Guerino, Principal Managing Partner

The International Foundation for Information Technology (IF4IT)
http://www.if4it.com
1.908.294.5191 (M)

Guerino1_Skype (S)

 

 

From: <main@SIKM.groups.io> on behalf of Stephen Bounds <km@...>
Reply-To: <main@SIKM.groups.io>
Date: Thursday, November 5, 2020 at 1:07 AM
To: <main@SIKM.groups.io>
Subject: Re: [SIKM] KM ROI #question

 

Hi Frank,

As Matt notes, all of these measures translate to "money" anyway. It's one of the key strengths and weaknesses of ROI.

Any time you are seeking to implement an intangible benefit, or at least a strategy which will have an impact one degree or more away from a direct financial return (this mostly, but not always equates to marketing and/or brand reputation), I am not a fan of ROI.

There are two reasons for this:

1. Non-direct interventions will always have a range of financial impacts due to uncertainty. A sound initiative might have little impact on your bottom line one quarter and an outsized return in another (eg think disaster preparedness).
   
   In these scenarios, it is more productive to talk about RROI (= relative return on investment). This allows you to rank the relative impacts of various initiatives on things the company does value, which allows a quantifiable, challengable evaluation of why a particular strategy is the correct one without promising $X return for a particular quarter.
2.  When you try and use ROI calculations for a non-ROI measure, too many people fall back on "X minutes saved * Y transactions a year = $Z BILLION saved in staff costs". 99% of the time, this is a fatally flawed approach due to the non-harvestable savings. You need to find a better, tangible proxy measure to target (eg # of complaints processed).

PS Patrick - Your Weick quote is so spot on in relation to middle management in any large corporation or government agency, where they are too far down to have major strategic influence, but too high up to have an operational role for day-to-day productivity.

Cheers,
Stephen.

====================================

Stephen Bounds

Executive, Information Management

Cordelta

E: stephen.bounds@...

M: 0401 829 096

====================================

 

Hi Stephen,

 

You wrote: “Any time you are seeking to implement an intangible benefit, or at least a strategy which will have an impact one degree or more away from a direct financial return (this mostly, but not always equates to marketing and/or brand reputation)”

 

1. I agree (more so with brand recognition/reputation than marketing, such as in the case of direct marketing, where such investments can still be correlated with impacts on sales revenue). 

 

Re: #1: Agreed.  DR is a very strong example.  However, even things like DR often still can and do get clearly written into bottom line expenses (deductibles) that can be measured against revenues for overall profits and ROIs.  DR ROI can be measured against time to recover, costs to recover, lost revenue for time down, etc., and they often are.

 

Re: #2: Saying that such items are “fatally” flawed may be a bit dramatic but I get your point.  The reality is that, where accurate measuring is not achievable, honest and competent people make their assessments based on educated guesses that they can often explain.

 

In short, I think that we agree on the premise that there is a science to ROI math that often bleeds into an art which drives how we come up with some of the numbers which we plug into our math.  In the cases where measurements cannot be accurate, educated guesses and even SWAGs often get reviewed and adjusted for improvements.   As I stated in my response to Matt, in the U.S. the key is to be consistent, leverage independent auditors (or other competent reviewers) to help stay within the guidelines of critical constraints set by your internal organizations like compliance or your external organizations like the U.S.’s IRS.

 

In the case of measurement against revenue generation, ROI is a live and constantly changing metric so there is constant oversight and re-evaluation.  In the case of DR, we often see the reality that very few organizations go back and measure the accuracy of their initial investments against their real costs and their down times & recovery times of their disasters because disasters are few and far between.  Only the most advanced organizations seem to.  Those that are not so mature simply suck up the costs of recovering and somehow role those costs into bottom line expenses (even if not clear as to why).

 

In the end, even “maturity” is a function of ROI.

 

My Best,

 

Frank

--

Frank Guerino, Principal Managing Partner

The International Foundation for Information Technology (IF4IT)
http://www.if4it.com
1.908.294.5191 (M)

Guerino1_Skype (S)

 

 

From: <main@SIKM.groups.io> on behalf of Stephen Bounds <km@...>
Reply-To: <main@SIKM.groups.io>
Date: Thursday, November 5, 2020 at 1:07 AM
To: <main@SIKM.groups.io>
Subject: Re: [SIKM] KM ROI #question

 

Hi Frank,

As Matt notes, all of these measures translate to "money" anyway. It's one of the key strengths and weaknesses of ROI.

Any time you are seeking to implement an intangible benefit, or at least a strategy which will have an impact one degree or more away from a direct financial return (this mostly, but not always equates to marketing and/or brand reputation), I am not a fan of ROI.

There are two reasons for this:

1. Non-direct interventions will always have a range of financial impacts due to uncertainty. A sound initiative might have little impact on your bottom line one quarter and an outsized return in another (eg think disaster preparedness).
   
   In these scenarios, it is more productive to talk about RROI (= relative return on investment). This allows you to rank the relative impacts of various initiatives on things the company does value, which allows a quantifiable, challengable evaluation of why a particular strategy is the correct one without promising $X return for a particular quarter.
2.  When you try and use ROI calculations for a non-ROI measure, too many people fall back on "X minutes saved * Y transactions a year = $Z BILLION saved in staff costs". 99% of the time, this is a fatally flawed approach due to the non-harvestable savings. You need to find a better, tangible proxy measure to target (eg # of complaints processed).

PS Patrick - Your Weick quote is so spot on in relation to middle management in any large corporation or government agency, where they are too far down to have major strategic influence, but too high up to have an operational role for day-to-day productivity.

Cheers,
Stephen.

====================================

Stephen Bounds

Executive, Information Management

Cordelta

E: stephen.bounds@...

M: 0401 829 096

====================================

 

Good day everyone. I would like present an opening we have at Dell for your consideration. Please feel free to see the attachment for additional detail and contact me via LinkedIn or via the email below.



Come join a team that understands the value of knowledge across the enterprise and is passionate about it! We focus on ensuring that the right information is available at the right time to the right audience. Our focus spans end to end across the entire service lifecycle, and we drive programs to improve the creation, access, and leverage of knowledge to support business outcomes.

Our team is collaborative and innovative, and works closely with many stakeholder organizations including remote support, field, deployment, presales, serviceability, product management, and more.



A key opportunity in Knowledge Management is to define and drive a Services strategy for taxonomy, ontology, and governance. This includes designing, implementing, and tuning a Natural Language Processing (NLP) platform that is tightly integrated into an ontology-based Enterprise Knowledge Graph platform. It also includes working with the NLP Platform Product Manager to define and drive the overall business strategy for integrated taxonomy and namespace management.

Bit Rambusch

Vice President, e-Services & Knowledge Management

Dell Technologies Services

Bit.Rambusch@Dell.com

Julien, welcome to the community, and thanks for your post!

Here are my answers. I hope that other members will also respond.

>Where can I find a beginner guide to KM?

1. Recommended Sites, Books, Blogs, Newsletters, Consultants, and Thought Leaders
2. KM Books
3. Learning about the field of Knowledge Management
4. 10 Ways to Build Expertise in Knowledge Management
5. Implementing a Successful KM Program

>Does anyone know of a solid KM glossary?

1. This article contains links to multiple glossaries: Defining knowledge management: Toward an applied compendium by John Girard  and JoAnn Girard
2. Glossary of Knowledge Management by Olivier Serrat
3. Glossary of terms used in competitive intelligence and knowledge management by Vernon Prior
4. Knowledge Management Glossary by Karl Wiig and Elisabeth Wiig
5. Knowledge Management Glossary by APQC
6. Knowledge Management Glossary by Reid G. Smith
7. A glossary of terms associated with Knowledge Management technologies and solutions by the Delphi Group
8. Knowledge Management (KM) Glossary by The International Foundation for Information Technology (IF4IT)
9. Glossary of Knowledge Management and Capacity Development by Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs
10. 100 Knowledge Management Specialties, 50 KM Components, and 50 Alternative Names for KM by Stan Garfield

>Is there any literature on the most effective models of online communication, i.e., how to structure an email, a web page, how to layout information so it is ingested in the correct manner?

1. Articles about Communications
2. User Interface, User Experience & Usability for Knowledge Management

>open communication

• Open the gates and tear down the walls; moving from "need to know" to "need to share"

>I can consult the archives of the SIKM mailing list, however private emails, chats and such other material are inaccessible to me.

• This is why I redirect queries sent privately to me to this open community. I prefer to answer questions here rather than in private exchanges. This allows others to also benefit, and allows for others to also provide answers.

P.S.  The piece I just posted a link to refers to a piece I published way back in 1979 titled "Finding the Bottom-Line Payoff of Training."  It could easily be retitled "Finding the Bottom-Line Payoff of KM" and the points would still be valid; namely, if you want to find the ROI of anything, you have to find it's bottom-line impact.  The link to this one is https://www.nickols.us/finding.pdf


Regards,

Fred Nickols, Knowledge Worker





-----Original Message-----
From: main@SIKM.groups.io <main@SIKM.groups.io> On Behalf Of Fred Nickols
Sent: Friday, November 6, 2020 10:44 AM
To: main@SIKM.groups.io
Subject: Re: [SIKM] KM ROI #question

Back in 2011, I published a piece in the UK's Training Journal about the ROI of Training.  It is titled "The ROI of Training: Valid Mission or Quixotic Quest?"  I believe much of what I wrote there applies to trying to determine the ROI of KM as well.  For those interested, here's a link to the piece.  It's only a page and half long.  https://www.nickols.us/TJ_ROIofTraining.pdf

Regards,

Fred Nickols, Knowledge Worker





-----Original Message-----
From: main@SIKM.groups.io <main@SIKM.groups.io> On Behalf Of Frank Guerino
Sent: Friday, November 6, 2020 10:21 AM
To: main@SIKM.groups.io
Subject: Re: [SIKM] KM ROI #question

Hi Matt,

You wrote: "A mature business should have something like a value driver tree that maps out contributions to value (which should include quality, customer sat, etc)."

- I would agree that it seems like they would.  However, even most very large and already successful companies and government organizations don't.
- Also, in the cases where I have seen such things, they're usually implemented and maintained by dedicated Architecture Organizations/Staff via Capability Models that highlight Maturity, Health and Impact Assessments.


You wrote: " However in less mature organisations, that understanding of the business might not exist. They may not even be able to allocate costs in an appropriate manner."

- True.  This would be a driver for becoming more mature because if they can't, then all metrics are mostly fabricated, since they're not mature enough to measure ROI of work performed.


You wrote: "In my experience, most non-finance executives could not correctly calculate an ROI (or an NPV for that matter) with a gun to their head.

- In my experience, it's rarely the executives who calculate ROI.  They just receive and review the reports, providing feedback for tactical and strategic improvements.
- In my experience, those who do perform such calculations are often not formally educated in finance but certainly do have significant financial knowledge from experience driven by the requirements of their jobs.  For example, I've worked with business and IT managers & executives who are brilliant at knowing and managing their finances, and I see such people in many organizations these days.  I'm certainly not a finance executive and have had more than my fair share of managing revenues, expenses, capitalizations, amortizations, and depreciations.  (Often, I wish I could forget what I know.)


You wrote: " When you start really digging into the assumptions and the numbers, most business cases have something dodgy somewhere."

- I would suggest that "dodgy" is in the eye of the beholder.  In the U.S., the IRS often gives broad guidelines for Good Accounting Practices (GAP), expensing, deducting, amortizing, etc., etc.  If you're not breaking the laws, how you interpret and stay within such guidelines often changes from company to company.  The most important thing is to simply be consistent, which is what professional auditors look for.  And, this brings up the point that most companies (especially public ones) use independent 3rd party auditors to keep them in check for reporting purposes.


On your point #5.  I fully agree.


My Best,

Frank
--
Frank Guerino, Principal Managing Partner The International Foundation for Information Technology (IF4IT) http://www.if4it.com
1.908.294.5191 (M)
Guerino1_Skype (S)


On 11/4/20, 7:44 PM, "Matt Moore" <main@SIKM.groups.io on behalf of matt@...> wrote:

    Frank,

    You are absolutely correct that you that ROI is a financial measure
    and has a standard form of calculation. And I fully agree that you
    need to link your initiatives to outcomes that resonate with
    executives. I would note some things.

    1. While time and quality are two common measures that you can link to
    finance, a lot of this depends on the nature of the business in
    question and its level of maturity. A mature business should have
    something like a value driver tree that maps out contributions to
    value (which should include quality, customer sat, etc). Being able to
    map your initiative to its impact on a key value driver is good thing.
    An acquaintance of mine started as the Head of Learning at a Finance
    Services company. He mapped the existing learning curriculum to the
    organisation's value driver tree and noted that 60% of the courses did
    not align to a value driver. Guess what his next step was.
    2. However in less mature organisations, that understanding of the
    business might not exist. They may not even be able to allocate costs
    in an appropriate manner. In that case, you either focus on the things
    they do understand (direct revenue or costs) or you are going to need
    to educate them (which is really hard).
    3. In my experience, most non-finance executives could not correctly
    calculate an ROI (or an NPV for that matter) with a gun to their head.
    I would expect the CFO to be able to do so (but I have been
    disappointed). Many execs (esp. sales and marketing) throw around the
    term but don't really know what it means.
    4. When you start really digging into the assumptions and the numbers,
    most business cases have something dodgy somewhere. I have put the
    same numbers in front of different senior executives and got radically
    different responses. I am especially sceptical of claims for impact of
    training courses without corresponding organisational change (e.g.
    KPIs).
    5. The thing I find most disappointing is how few organisations
    actually chase up projects and initiatives and review the outcomes
    compared to the business case. It does happen but nowhere near often
    enough. Which tells me something about the way that business cases and
    ROI calculations actually function to how we are told they function.

    The HBR have a handy guide if people are interested:
    https://store.hbr.org/product/hbr-tools-return-on-investment-roi/TLROI1

    Regards,

    Matt

Hi Stephen,

 

You wrote: “Any time you are seeking to implement an intangible benefit, or at least a strategy which will have an impact one degree or more away from a direct financial return (this mostly, but not always equates to marketing and/or brand reputation)”

 

• I agree (more so with brand recognition/reputation than marketing, such as in the case of direct marketing, where such investments can still be correlated with impacts on sales revenue). 

 

Re: #1: Agreed.  DR is a very strong example.  However, even things like DR often still can and do get clearly written into bottom line expenses (deductibles) that can be measured against revenues for overall profits and ROIs.  DR ROI can be measured against time to recover, costs to recover, lost revenue for time down, etc., and they often are.

 

Re: #2: Saying that such items are “fatally” flawed may be a bit dramatic but I get your point.  The reality is that, where accurate measuring is not achievable, honest and competent people make their assessments based on educated guesses that they can often explain.

 

In short, I think that we agree on the premise that there is a science to ROI math that often bleeds into an art which drives how we come up with some of the numbers which we plug into our math.  In the cases where measurements cannot be accurate, educated guesses and even SWAGs often get reviewed and adjusted for improvements.   As I stated in my response to Matt, in the U.S. the key is to be consistent, leverage independent auditors (or other competent reviewers) to help stay within the guidelines of critical constraints set by your internal organizations like compliance or your external organizations like the U.S.’s IRS.

 

In the case of measurement against revenue generation, ROI is a live and constantly changing metric so there is constant oversight and re-evaluation.  In the case of DR, we often see the reality that very few organizations go back and measure the accuracy of their initial investments against their real costs and their down times & recovery times of their disasters because disasters are few and far between.  Only the most advanced organizations seem to.  Those that are not so mature simply suck up the costs of recovering and somehow role those costs into bottom line expenses (even if not clear as to why).

 

In the end, even “maturity” is a function of ROI.

 

My Best,

 

Frank

--

Frank Guerino, Principal Managing Partner

The International Foundation for Information Technology (IF4IT)
http://www.if4it.com
1.908.294.5191 (M)

Guerino1_Skype (S)

 

 

From: <main@SIKM.groups.io> on behalf of Stephen Bounds <km@...>
Reply-To: <main@SIKM.groups.io>
Date: Thursday, November 5, 2020 at 1:07 AM
To: <main@SIKM.groups.io>
Subject: Re: [SIKM] KM ROI #question

 

Hi Frank,

As Matt notes, all of these measures translate to "money" anyway. It's one of the key strengths and weaknesses of ROI.

Any time you are seeking to implement an intangible benefit, or at least a strategy which will have an impact one degree or more away from a direct financial return (this mostly, but not always equates to marketing and/or brand reputation), I am not a fan of ROI.

There are two reasons for this:

1. Non-direct interventions will always have a range of financial impacts due to uncertainty. A sound initiative might have little impact on your bottom line one quarter and an outsized return in another (eg think disaster preparedness).
   
   In these scenarios, it is more productive to talk about RROI (= relative return on investment). This allows you to rank the relative impacts of various initiatives on things the company does value, which allows a quantifiable, challengable evaluation of why a particular strategy is the correct one without promising $X return for a particular quarter.
2.  When you try and use ROI calculations for a non-ROI measure, too many people fall back on "X minutes saved * Y transactions a year = $Z BILLION saved in staff costs". 99% of the time, this is a fatally flawed approach due to the non-harvestable savings. You need to find a better, tangible proxy measure to target (eg # of complaints processed).

PS Patrick - Your Weick quote is so spot on in relation to middle management in any large corporation or government agency, where they are too far down to have major strategic influence, but too high up to have an operational role for day-to-day productivity.

Cheers,
Stephen.

====================================

Stephen Bounds

Executive, Information Management

Cordelta

E: stephen.bounds@...

M: 0401 829 096

====================================