Putting together some slides some slides for an upcoming conference, I started to put some thought into the elusive Business Value of Enterprise 2.0. After doing this for the past 4 years, locating examples of business value isn’t really that hard, especially when you have 30,000 case studies to pull from. That being said, I am reminded that not every implementation has that type of history or luxury. Breaking down this concept into two different perspectives, business value can be measured at a macro and micro level.

Starting with the macro level where the implementations meld in one overall point of view, we can abstract the business value from the metrics. For example, if we look at the Wiki environment we can judge the business value by the number of wiki pages in the inventory. This isn't unusual since just about every article or case study will pull out their metrics as a benchmark of success. For me, it is more about the 3-5 year growth numbers that I am concerned with. Frankly, it isn't all that hard to get early adopters to get excited about social or collaborative software; keeping that excitement sustained for five years is impressive. Summary metrics can tell you which business units are adopting the tools, to what level they have integrated them into their environment, and the degree of usage and reuse that they have obtained. While the macro level of business value doesn't produce hard numbers, you can bet your bottom bookmark that double digit growth over an extended period time is doing just that; delivering business value.

The second level of business value comes at the micro level where each implementation can produce hard numbers. This value may be in the form of cost reductions such replacing applications, reducing staff, or simply lowering the cost of business. They may also be in the form of business speed such as enabling workflow or assembling new applications in days versus months. Additionally, we can break down the value in many other areas like improving the product or service, improving the customer focus, and enabling innovation excellence. All of these areas can be measured by looking at the direct tangible benefits, indirect tangible benefits, intangible benefits, and even unpredictable benefits.

The point of this post is simply to recognize that you can approach the business value question from multiple perspectives. Both are valid and both are required to ensure the continual investment by the business.