1. What’s it worth?
Measuring the value of
knowledge
Rob Usher and Marti Callahan
17 October 2013

2. Page 2
About us
Rob Usher leads EY’s Knowledge Analytics team in
measuring the organization’s global knowledge usage,
culture and impact. The team uses web analytics, surveys
and other tools to track and assess the benefits of
connecting people to knowledge and people to people. Rob
has been with EY for 15 years in a variety of knowledge
management roles. He previously worked for NASA and the
Air Force. Rob has degrees in Aerospace Engineering and in
Technology Policy.
Marti Callahan is a measures analyst at EY. Her team is
responsible for collecting and interpreting usage metrics
across the organization. Marti leads the execution of the
Global Knowledge Survey, analyzes the results and works
with leadership on interpreting the data to impact decision-
making. Marti has been at EY for five years primarily on the
Analytics team. Marti has a degree in Finance.
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Today’s topics
► EY overview
► EY Knowledge overview
► Measuring and reporting philosophy
► Global Knowledge Survey
► Key performance indicators (KPIs)
► Questions
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EY overview
Environment
► Member firms comprising 167,000 people in 140 countries
► Core services of audit, tax, transaction and advisory
► Diverse business units
► Numerous service offerings within each unit
► Hundreds of communities (e.g., geographic areas, industries, sectors, service
lines, account teams)
► Constant change and growth
Individual profiles
► Highly mobile and remote
► Prompt in execution
► Required to team, collaborate and share knowledge
► Need flexible access to knowledge
► Need automated customization of tools
► Beginning to integrate new media tools into workflow
► Significant population of recent college graduates accustomed to collaborating
via social networking techniques
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EY Knowledge overview
► EY Knowledge is EY’s global knowledge organization
covering knowledge, content, technology and relationship
management disciplines.
► EY Knowledge connect EY’s practitioners to the people,
insights and tools they need to deliver a client service that
is:
► Connected to the client’s agenda and brings the power of a
connected EY to each encounter
► Responsive to the client’s needs by having access to the right
information at the right time
► Insightful through deep sector and company insight harvested from
inside and outside of EY
► We have a primary focus on enabling self-service support.
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Measuring and reporting philosophy
► We collect both organization-wide and stakeholder-focused indicators.
► The results and analysis are used by our relationship and portfolio owners
for relationship management with stakeholders.
HomePage
HomePage
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What we measure
Platforms and tools Levels of measurement Demographics
► ey.com, including (120+ countries):
► ey.com mobile and
emerging tech
► AccountingLink
► Client Portal including eRooms
► Community HomeSpaces (100+
globally)
► EY Home Page including news
► External sources
► Account pages
► Credentials
► Directors Cross Reference Online
► Lotus Connections
► Lotus and Domino databases
► Search (internal tools and ey.com)
► ASK
High-level summaries for
platforms and tools
(e.g., visitors globally)
Detailed content usage
(e.g., views of a specific page)
► EY demographics:
► Service line
► Sub-service line
► Country
► Area
► Rank
► Role
► Client demographics:
► Account
► Account type
► Role
► Public demographics:
► Company
► Geography
► EY currently uses Webtrends for the bulk of our web analytic capabilities.
► We are increasingly using social media metrics tools and Google Analytics.
► The Knowledge Analytics team applies web analytics to measure the use and impact of knowledge
content and resources.
► We manage reporting requirements as well as development management, data consumption
and analysis.
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Global Knowledge Survey
► EY provides knowledge resources to help practitioners be insightful,
responsive and connected with their clients.
► The Global Knowledge Survey is conducted twice per year to assess the
effectiveness of knowledge resources and EY Knowledge culture.
► The results about our knowledge tools and content help determine return on
investment from our knowledge resources and drive strategic decisions on
new developments and awareness efforts.
► Most of the questions about our knowledge culture have been asked
consistently since June 2009, giving us four years of trackable data.
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Global Knowledge Survey
► These are the definitions we use throughout the survey:
► “Knowledge” includes policies, methods, templates, credentials, thought leadership,
proposals, other business development materials, service deliverables and
industry/company information.
► “Knowledge resources” includes the EY Home Page, databases, Community
HomeSpaces, eRoom, service line/sector knowledge tools and external sources.
► “Knowledge contributions” includes document submission to an EY database,
subject matter review, thought leadership creation, credentials, CV update and
Connections community/blog/discussion forum participation.
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Global Knowledge Survey approach
ꜜ ꜜ ꜜ
Global Knowledge Survey sample
Demographic questions
Knowledge culture questions
Sector questions
► 10% sample of EY global population
– stratified across service line and
rank
► Service line, sub-service line, sector,
Area, Region, country and rank
► EY Knowledge-defined questions,
applicable across EY regardless of
service line or sector
► Service line-defined questions
targeted to specific knowledge
needs, resources and processes
► Sector-specific Community
HomeSpace value and
awareness questions
► Feed results into service line
community reports, sector reports
and KPI reportsResults analyzed by multiple parameters
Assurance
questions
TAS
questions
Tax
questions
Advisory
questions
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Findings and actions to improve EY knowledge culture
Status/trend Question topics and findings Recommended actions

Content value and awareness:
►Overall, 75% find content valuable.
►Overall, content awareness is fairly high at 85%.
► Continue to expand content collection initiatives, drawing from accounts
and responding to the specific content type needs expressed by service
line respondents in the Global Knowledge Survey
► Review publication process and find ways to improve the publication speed
► Continue to work with content management, sector centers and service
lines, subject matter reviewers, and others to get content out on time and to
archive outdated content
► Review content ratings and take action on low ratings
► Continue awareness efforts – they seem to be working

Knowledge resources enabling job performance:
►Globally, those who said knowledge resources enabled their
role decreased 4%.
►Overall global trend is stable.
►Americas and Asia-Pacific had the highest level of job
performance enablement.
►Assurance had the highest of the service lines.
► Continue awareness activities such as EY Knowledge end user
communications campaign
► Target campaigns to be service line specific

Knowledge embedded in performance plans:
►Those who said they have knowledge sharing goals in their
annual plan increased 2%.
►Asia-Pacific leads other Areas.
►Advisory leads other service lines.
► Work with People team, service lines and other leadership to formally
infuse knowledge-sharing activities and behaviors as expected and
measured components in client-serving roles
► Further investigate reasons why Asia-Pacific would decrease
 Good
 Stable
 Needs improvement
► Sample presentation of information and analysis
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Area comparison – knowledge culture questions
Question Americas Asia-Pacific EMEIA
EY’s knowledge resources are always/often enable role performance.
Knowledge sharing/usage is part of annual plan/goals.
Overall, EY content provides great or good value.
Highest % of
response
Lowest % of response
► Sample presentation of Area findings
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Content value
Americas Asia-Pacific EMEIA
Area content value
Americas content value Asia-Pacific content value
EMEIA content value
► Sample breakdown for survey question: indicate how valuable you find the EY content
you use to provide exceptional client service and/or do your job better
Templates
Company/industry info
Methodologies
Training materials
Proposals
Thought leadership
Service delivery
Credentials
Global content value
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Trends
Job performance enablement
Always/often
Knowledge enabling job performance has been relatively
stable over the past four years with a small peak in 2011.
Knowledge-sharing goals
Personnel with knowledge-sharing goals in their annual
performance plans has been stable over the past three
years after a successful initiative in 2009.
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Knowledge time and cost savings
► EY recognizes that efficiency – described by time and corresponding cost
savings – is an important benefit of having a vibrant knowledge culture.
► The additional positive impacts of a successful knowledge culture that we
recognize include winning new work, improved quality of work, mitigating risk
through consistency, and client satisfaction and confidence.
► EY also acknowledges that quantifying specific cost savings from the many
different elements of a knowledge culture is extremely challenging.
► It’s important to make a good-faith effort to quantify in order to acknowledge this
key benefit and to evaluate trending over time.
► The approach we take follows these steps:
1. We survey a statistical cross-section of the organization.
2. The survey allows practitioners to self-report any time savings per month from their
knowledge use and reuse.
3. We project data up from the sample size and response rate to full organization-
wide level.
4. We convert time savings to cost savings based on the respondent’s rank and
corresponding fully loaded cost to EY.
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Knowledge time and cost savings
The number of actual survey respondents reporting 1–5 hours
= 157 people
Multiply by 10 to bring to total theoretical responses – as if
whole organization was actually surveyed instead of 10%
statistical sample.
Survey question: Estimate how much time you save per month by utilizing knowledge or knowledge resources, including
Community Home Spaces, Connection community, blog or wiki, Credentials, Databases, eRoom, external sources, EY Home
Page, industry/company information, methods, other business development materials, policies, proposals, service deliverables,
service line/sector knowledge tools, templates and thought leadership.
For our calculations, we average the time
bands offered in the survey question:
1–5 hrs = 3 hrs 6–10 hrs = 8 hrs
11–20 hrs = 15 hrs 21+ hrs = 21 hrs
Sum the four white hours per month cells above
Multiply by 12 to convert to hours per year
= (# of people) x (average hours)
Multiply by hourly fully loaded hourly cost for this
rank
Estimates total savings per year as if the whole of EY had been
surveyed
Repeat for each rank using their hourly loaded rate
Repeat for each hours-saved level
Hours saved per month [Sample rank]
3 1,570
Time saved/month (hours) 4,710
8 740
Time saved/month (hours) 5,920
15 150
Time saved/month (hours) 2,250
21 70
Time saved/month (hours) 1,470
Total time saved/month (hours)
(total EY theoretical) 14,350
x
12 months 12
x
Hourly fully loaded cost $XX
=
$ saved from this rank per year
(total EY theoretical) $ XX M
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► The analysis is a bottom-up approach based on actual, countable responses to the
survey scaled up only to accommodate for the survey sample size of 10%.
► The actual survey response rate (within the 10% sample rate) commonly ranges around
20%. Accounting for the response rate provides the total savings if everyone in EY
were to personally answer this survey question and the proportions followed the
statistical sample.
Knowledge time and cost savings
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Who uses results?
► Results may be used by all service lines, sectors, EY Knowledge and other
communities to assess broad cultural trends and provide feedback on specific
knowledge resources.
► Area leaders and their geographically focused teams use the Area data not
only for Area reporting on the enablement of self-service, but also to fine tune
plans and demonstrate impact.
► Service line team members who work with our EY Knowledge leadership
focus on the results and areas for improvement.
► The statistics can be used to emphasize elements of other presentations.
► Functional team leaders use information from the survey to drive change and
action.
► Results are used to feed KPIs reported to senior leadership; these track and
communicate the value of knowledge in EY.
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Knowledge key performance indicators
EY focus Key performance indicators
Market leadership and growth
Knowledge Priority Accounts coverage
Knowledge Priority Accounts revenue footprint
Service line account integration
High-impact target pursuits coverage
Media footprint supported by EY Knowledge
Social media footprint supported by EY Knowledge
ey.com competitive ranking
Quality
Guided self-service customer satisfaction
Content seen as “valuable”
Content seen as “accessible”
People
Performance goal(s) related to knowledge share/reuse
Global awareness of knowledge resources
Knowledge helps us do our job
Knowledge is shared across the organization
Operational excellence
EY Knowledge CHS usage across the organization
Submissions received
Dollars and time saved across EY with knowledge per
year
EY Home Page usage across EY
Budget spend to date (over/under plan)
GTH/GSS usage
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Questions?
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