User:HalSchlenger/Return on Social Business

The return on social business (RoSB) is a metric to show how effective a company’s social business- enabling efforts are at generating business value. RoSB of an organization (an entire company or a functional area) can be computed as:


 * RoSB = (organization expense) x (% change in business value of affected company or functional area) / (social business-enabling spend) X100


 * Where:

Organization change = the percent of improvement of the organization that they believe is attributable to their social business investments
 * Organization expense = costs of operating the organization
 * Social business-enabling spend = the total amount of money spent to deploy technologies, processes and cultural changes over a period of time


 * Example: ($10 mil x 5%) / $250,000 = 200% RoSB

This index is a comparative measure for what one company or functional area within a company has done with its social business investments. It’s a useful number because simply deploying social business technologies themselves without any change leadership strategies into a culture that’s not receptive or a good fit for the change will likely be unsuccessful, providing little, and potentially negative, value to the company..

RoSB is an extension of the ROC (Return on Collaboration index) originally introduced in the landmark Frost and Sullivan study, “Meetings Around the World II: Charting the Course of Advanced Collaboration”. Collaboration technologies remain the foundational technologies of social business; however, since the Frost and Sullivan study, an entire set of new social tools and approaches have emerged that significantly extend the nature of business impacts that are achievable when empowered by technology. These include wikis (collaborative writing), blogs (self-publishing), expertise location services, social tagging and bookmarking, and other social networking tools.

The challenge (and art) of defining RoSB is the appreciation of key value propositions that relate to adopting to the “new world of work,” a term coined by Paul E. Miller. The business value increases:


 * As the maturity of the culture of collaboration increases. The maturity is directly related to the adoption of social business tools, and visa versa,
 * With thoughtful and proactive approach to change leadership, and
 * Enabling Systems and Tools are necessary though not sufficient without the appropriate people, process and culture.

John Girard, Cindy Gordon and JoAnn Girarda, in their book Business Goes Virtual, wrote “technology is a key enabler but technology alone is not enough to sustain the revolution.” They added, the ‘adage of today should be “tight lips, business slips” because we believe that failure to share (editor’s note: share or be social) frequently results in lost opportunities.

Progress report for 2012

The RoSB metric was initially introduced by the “Social Business Around the US and Georgia” survey and study commissioned by the Technology Association of Georgia (TAG) Social Business Society in April, 2012. It endeavors to assess the extent of collaboration and social business technologies deployed, and align them against company demographics (e.g. industry, size, and culture), and business value realized (specifically, RoSB). The intent of this study is to identify any patterns re: social business among its membership, highlight those who have realized business value (as possible peer case studies in future meetings), and in general, better understand our members so that we may better meet their needs.

While targeted directly to the Society’s membership, the approach of the study in no way restricts its usage to Georgia. Other companies who wish to participate are welcome to complete the survey linked at http://www.tagonline.org/tag_social_business.php.

By participating, you are entitled to reviewing the summary report, including the aggregate summary of data. The study will be running through October 31, 2012.

[1] http://newscenter.verizon.com/kit/collaboration/MAW_WP.pdf [2] http://www.verizonbusiness.com/resources/whitepapers/wp_meetings-around-the-world-ii_en_xg.pdf [3] http://www.cisco.com/en/US/solutions/collateral/ns340/ns856/ns870/c11-597613-00_return_collab_wp.pdf [4] Business Goes Virtual: Realizing the Value of Collaboration, Social and Virtual Strategies (The Strategic Managment Collection) by John Girard, Cindy Gordon and JoAnn Girard. pg 66