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Jon Mell

Thanks to David Elstob this blog now renders correctly in IE 6. I’m always surprised that over 20% of visitors use IE 6 - guess it must be from corporates with locked down machines that haven’t been upgraded?

Social software ROINovember 10

A few weeks ago I was in Zurich presenting at Somesso. Part of my talk was around ROI where I had the opportunity to speak about why ROI is so difficult for social software.

First, it’s always worth checking whether or not your ROI case is needed to convince people that social software is a good thing, or to get your social project formally approved. If you’re trying to use an ROI case to convince people that they should undertake a social software project it’s unlikely to work - Larry Hawes puts this best:

“No business case will sell social software to a firm that doesn’t already value collaboration in its culture.”

However, an ROI can be used to get a social software project approved. When I was working with Portal products several years ago, we often sold them on the basis of collaboration and productivity, but got them approved by making a case that due to single sign on the number of calls to the (outsourced) technical help desk would be reduced. An approval

Headshift opening offices in USANovember 3

Attention US readers - Headshift is opening offices in the USA. We’ll be looking to take our partnerships with IBM, Socialtext, Jive and Atlassian amongst others across the pond - but make sure to get in touch with Christoph if you want to set up a meeting to discuss using social software.

Death of ROIOctober 28

Blog post after my own heart by Penny Edward of Headshift on the death of ROI for improvement and innovation.

Why bother with Social Software?October 20

Does social software really add value? Does an Enterprise 2.0 ROI actually exist? How would you measure it? Is it just for time wasters (like email, the internet, instant messaging etc.). During a credit crunch surely employees could be performing more valuable activities? Social software helps put position yourself to be in the right place at the right time. The more people know about you, and the more people hear about you, the more likely to are going to be at the forefront of their mind when they, or people you know, are in need of your services. Social software can become a serendipity lubricant - helping people make connections that give value to both parties at very low cost and, equally importantly, effort. The problem from an ROI perspective is that the evidence can become very anecdotal. It is more of a story along the lines of “we would never have won that deal if I hadn’t come across John’s blog post and realised his services could significantly differentiate our offering”. This is not as measurable as traditional IT solutions wh