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From RFI to ROI: Document CCMS Investment
- 1. From RFI to ROI: How to Document the Return on your CCMS Investment Deb Bissantz, GlobalLink Vasont
- 2. Why are we here? • Purchasing a CCMS • Using a CCMS • Proving ROI • Seeking advice
- 3. Request for Information (RFI)
- 4. Gather Metrics • Team productivity • SME productivity • Translation • Number of products • Number of documents • Development timeline
- 5. Determine Goals • Why are you doing this? • What are your pain points? • What is your vision?
- 6. Return on Investment (ROI)
- 7. What Is Return On Investment? • A return on investment, or ROI, is a specific calculation of an investment's cost versus its benefit. • The formula used to calculate ROI is: ROI = (Gain of Investment) - (Cost of Investment) (Cost of Investment)
- 8. Why is ROI Important? • It quantifies value • It builds stakeholder support • It uncovers additional benefits
- 9. Initial Implementation of a CCMS
- 10. Cost of Investment • The money you spend on implementing a CCMS • Licensing fees, tech support, subscription services and so forth • Installation and training fees • Lack of functionality the current system has • Period of diminished productivity while staff adjusts (opportunity cost)
- 11. Gain of Investment • The amount of money you could gain from implementing a CCMS • Process efficiencies • Increased customer satisfaction • Cost avoidance • Fees or costs associated with old system
- 13. Cost of Investment • The money you spend on maintaining your CCMS • Licensing fees, tech support, subscription services and so forth • Cost training on new features
- 14. Gain of Investment • The amount of money you could gain from using a CCMS • Process efficiencies • Increased customer satisfaction • Cost avoidance
- 15. How to Quantify
- 16. Quantify Your Answers • Productivity • Translation • Number of products • Number of documents • Development timeline
- 17. Calculate the Value • Improved productivity • Reduced support calls • Client satisfaction • Translation savings • Avoid penalties • Time period
- 18. Review Your Goals • Did you solve your pain points? • Did the CCMS meet your expectations? • Do you have the solutions you were looking for?
- 19. Don’t stop! Keep going!
- 20. Improvements • New features • New measurements • New goals
- 21. ROI and beyond • Metrics • Goals • Requirements • Metrics • Goals • Requirements • Metrics • Goals • New features
- 22. Resources • Contact me dbissantz@Vasont.com for: • Additional information • ROI calculator • White paper • References • Forbes article by Meghann Chilcott • CIO article by Chris Doig • Vertitechit Blog
- 23. Questions
Editor's Notes
- Welcome to From RFI to ROI: How to Document the Return on your CCMS Investment. Thank you for attending.
- Poll the audience How many are starting the journey to purchase a CCMS? How many are currently using a CCMS? How many need to prove the value of your CCMS? I hope to share some tips to help you document the value of your CCMS. I am Deb Bissantz. I am an account manager and sales engineer for GlobalLink Vasont, previously know as Vasont Systems. As a sales engineer, I review RFI and RFP documentation and provide demos of our solutions to prospective clients. As an account manager, I work with existing clients to make sure they are successful and making the most of their CCMS. In addition to the tips I’ll share today, I recommend visiting our website. We have an ROI calculator that can help you determine the success of your CCMS.
- I gave a version of this presentation early this year where I focused on the process of going from RFI to ROI. This time, I’d like to focus on the ROI piece, but in order to do that, you still need to start with a request for information. If you are starting to investigate a CCMS, you’ll need to pull together some information for vendors, as well as your business leaders.
- You need to know where you are now. You will need to gather some metrics. These metrics will be helpful when it comes time to calculate your ROI. This information will be your baseline. You might want to gather metrics on … Team productivity – Time spent searching for reusable content Time spent authoring new content Time spent reviewing product content Time spent on layout and design Time spent on project management activities Time spent on other activities SME productivity – Time spent searching for reusable content Time spent authoring new content Time spent reviewing product content Translation – Time spent on translation-related activities Number of languages Time or money spent on desktop publishing Time or money spent on translation and linguistic review Time or money spent on project management
- Determine your goals – be specific Why are you doing this? •Because it everybody is doing this •It is the latest industry fad What pain points are you trying to alleviate? •Manual tasks •Long turn around times •High translation costs What to you expect to gain from a CCMS? •Cut translation costs by 50% •Cut documentation development by 25% •Reuse 30% of content What solutions are you looking for? •Automated publishing process •Dynamic publishing •Easily findability •Easily usability and reusability
- Now that you have your metrics and goals, how does that affect the return on investment? I hope to show you how you use that information to show a positive return on investment for a CCMS.
- I thought I would start with a definition of return on investment or ROI. ROI is a specific calculation of an investment’s cost versus its benefit. So, the ultimate goal is to show that your investment or CCMS is providing more gain than it is costing. While the calculation or formula is fairly simple, determining gains or benefits and costs can be tricky. This is where your metrics and goals come into play. Also, think about the ROI for a specific period of time. Your ROI for the first month after implementation, will probably be different from your ROI over the course of the year. Your ROI for your first year will be different from your ROI for year 5. I hope to provide you with some tips to identify and determine the gains and costs for a CCMS.
- I also think before you start calculating the ROI, you need to know why it is important. It quantifies project value – Perhaps the most important aspect of ROI is its ability to show business leaders dollar figures of a project’s worth. ROI turns the subjective into the objective, which can often turn uncertainty into support. It can build stakeholder support – Tying a dollar value to a project may help with a “go/no-go” decision. Many times, stakeholders want to see what the dollar value is to them if they are to support a particular project. Without an ROI, that is very difficult to do. It can uncover additional benefits – The process of calculating ROI forces practitioners to investigate benefits that might not have seemed obvious at project inception.
- So, let’s talk about the ROI for the initial implementation of a CCMS. It might help if you think of this as a projected ROI. You are setting the stage for your business leaders of the gains they can expect from this investment.
- I’m going to start with the cost of the investment, because it is usually the easiest value to determine. The cost of your investment is the amount of money you spend on implementing the CCMS. The most obvious source of costs will include things like licensing fees, tech support, subscription services and so forth. There are probably additional one-time costs of implementing a new software system and include installation fees and preparing and training your staff. It is possible that your new system will lack some of the functionality your current system has. To be honest and fair, factor this into your costs. In addition to the actual money, think about the time your staff spends learning about the system. This is time they could have spent elsewhere. You can also expect a period of diminished productivity while your staff adjusts. Remember time is money. You might not know how to quantify the time you're saving or the time you're losing during the implementation period, do the best you can. If needed, consult with your company's accounting if you have any questions. I mentioned earlier that the ROI is calculate for a period of time. It is likely that the ROI will be much lower at first due to the high upfront costs of implementing a new system.
- Now, let’s look at the benefits or gains of implementing a CCMS. Again, these are probably going to be projected values. You want to quantify expected efficiency gains. Because a CCMS is your single source of truth, you might expect to spend less time finding content. By managing reusable content in a CCMS, you can anticipate less content to write, update, review, and translate. Think about how a CCMS might increase customer satisfaction. By managing XML content in a CCMS, you can improve the quality of your content. Reusing content provides for consistency in both brand and voice. Cost avoidance is also considered a gain. A CCMS ensures a secure repository with authorized access to ensure regulatory compliance. The money you don't pay out in fines would be a gain in investment. Finally, remember that for most companies, your new software will replace an old system. That old system cost you money, whether it's through licensing fees for the software you used or the smaller costs associated with an old-fashioned pen-and-paper record system. You can factor the money you're not spending on the old system into the gain of the investment.
- So what about maintaining a CCMS. How to you calculate the ROI of an existing system? As I mentioned before, the ROI for maintaining a CCMS will be based on a specific period of time. For example, what is the ROI for the past year or past 5 years. Also, some of the costs and gains differ for an existing system. Let’s look at those now.
- Hopefully, over time, the costs of your CCMS investment will start to plateau. You won’t have installation costs. The learning curve is not as steep. The costs should be limited to annual maintenance and license fees. You might have some occasional costs associated with learning new features, but these should be few and far between.
- Hopefully, you are still seeing the same gains that you saw as part of the implementation. Maybe you are seeing other process efficiencies or new areas of efficiency. Are there efficiencies outside of tech pubs as a result of using a CCMS? Are there client efficiencies due to improved search optimization? Are you increasing the amount of reused content? Are your development cycles shorter? You are still taking advantage of content reuse to provide consistent and accurate content. You are continually improving the quality of your content. The CCMS is still a secure repository with authorized access to ensure regulatory compliance. Again, the money you don't pay out in fines continues to be a gain. The one gain that you don’t have with an existing system is the cost of an older system.
- So, I’ve talked about the costs and benefits of implementing a CCMS. A lot of the data to calculate this seems rather subjective, such as increased productivity. How do you quantify that information?
- This is where your metrics are critical. You need to continuously gather metrics. You will compare baseline or previous values with current values to determine your success over time. I mentioned some of these metrics earlier. Is your team spending less time… Searching for reusable content Authoring new content Reviewing product content On layout and design Have you reduced your translation costs? Less content to translation Have you increased the number of languages Less time spent on translation and linguistic review Have you shortened the development cycles? Are you managing more documents, but less content due to reuse? Are you seeing an increase in up sales due to customer satisfaction? Are you seeing fewer support calls due to customer satisfaction? You will use the data from these measurements to determine your increased productivity, your translation cost savings, and the amount of content you are managing.
- Based on your metrics, you can now calculate the ROI. Put dollar amounts or time on the gains. Remember time is money. Look for ways to quantify client satisfaction – Are they finding answers sooner? Are there fewer support calls? Can you deliver a custom document rather than a multi-product document? Car manuals are an example where a little customization or profiling would make the user guide so much better. Customers don’t want to see, some features are not available in all models. Again, you might not know how to quantify the time you're saving or the time you're losing during the implementation period. Do the best you can, and consult with your company's accountant if you have any questions. Over time, this will get easier. Remember the formula for ROI is gain-cost/cost. Also, remember to express the ROI in relation to a period of time.
- In addition to calculating the ROI, review your goals. Did the CCMS meet those goals? Did the CCMS help automate those manual tasks? Did the CCMS help reduce translation costs? Did you see the process efficiencies you were looking for? This is information that can support your ROI.
- Even though you have shown a positive ROI, don’t stop.
- Continue to look for ways to improve your environment. Vendors will continue to enhance their products. Look at new features, can they improve your situation, provide a solution to a pain point? Start collecting new metrics, such as content reuse. How about reducing the amount of time SMEs review content? Set some new goals. Support additional languages Add new products Look at new delivery options
- Review the reasons for purchasing and using a CCMS. You had goals and requirements that you wanted to meet by using a CCMS. Using your metrics, goals, and requirements for choosing the CCMS will determine the value of that tool going forward. Continue to adjust your metrics and goals to continuously improve your solution. Use the metrics and goals to continue to prove the value of your CCMS.
- Here is my contact information if you want additional information. We do have an ROI calculator that can help you determine the value of your CCMS. Contact me and I will get that to you. Stop by our booth to pick up the Cost Justification for the GlobalLink CCMS white paper. While research this presentation, I found a few articles about determining ROI for software. Here are links to those articles. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2018/05/31/determining-the-return-on-investment-on-a-new-software-purchase/#583023040541 by Meghann Chilcott Forbes Councils Member https://www.cio.com/article/2969353/why-you-should-always-estimate-roi-before-buying-enterprise-software.html by Chris Doig https://www.vertitechit.com/roi-of-it-how-to-calculate-measure-improve-roi-on-it-investments/
- Are there any questions?