How to Measure Your Intranet ROI and When Does Its Profitability Show?

If you are evaluating a potential project that requires an initial investment and is expected to generate a profit over time, it is customary to evaluate its ROI or return on investment.
Even though the concept of ROI originates from finance, when evaluating the potential return between different investment opportunities, the same concept may be used to justify any type of investment.
intranet roi metrics
In particular, an investment in software can be evaluated through the ROI lens – examining how much the project would cost vs how much the software could bring in benefits in the future.
Return on investment is a percentage calculated by the following formula:
ROI = Net profit from the investment / Capital invested × 100
The net profit means any financial gains less the cost of the investment:
Net profit = Profit from the investment – Capital invested
Time is of the essence when working with the ROI concept. Let us say you buy a money printing machine for 120 dollars, but the machine can only print 20 dollars per month. If you calculate the ROI after the first month, you will get a negative return. But if you do the same after a year, your ROI would be 100% – that means that by that time you would have covered your initial cost (0% ROI) and made the amount of your initial investment in profits.
Let us apply this concept to a potential intranet project. In previous posts, we examined in detail how an intranet can bring you profits and how you can estimate them. We also examined possible project costs.
Let us now estimate the return on investment for a digital workplace project for a mid-sized company. The estimates below are mostly based on the experiences of our clients, but we have synthesized several use cases for illustration.
A mid-sized company of 700 employees is experiencing a 6% voluntary turnover rate. The costs of recruiting are estimated at 53% of an average employee’s salary and it takes 124 hours of various processes and training to on-board an employee. In terms of employee productivity in the workplace, the company estimates on average that 30% of time is spent working with emails, 15% in meetings and 20% in searching the company’s information.
Employee engagement ROI
The company is studying the introduction of a digital workplace through a companywide intranet. Based on use cases and benchmarks, the expected results from the new intranet, if it is a success, are as follows:
Intranet cost saving
The new digital workplace is expected to impact positively employee turnover, on-boarding, employee engagement and employee productivity, generating the following profits:
Measuring intranet ROI
In terms of costs, the company has estimated its in-house investment in time and personnel and obtained a vendor quote. This covers all phases of the project from the initial investment to the project’s on-going costs.
Intranet ROI investment metrics
Based on the above assumptions and calculations, the intranet project is expected to become profitable in its first year in production, reaching 1000% ROI in year 3.
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Digital Workplace FAQs

You will find here Frequently Asked Questions about intranet with all the answers in one place.

A digital workplace is a next generation of intranet solutions or intranet 2.0 that is based on three pillars: communication, collaboration and information. In a way this definition is true but it doesn’t cover the whole spectrum of the term. Here are some definitions of digital workplace:

 
  • An evolution of the intranet
  • A user centric digital experience
 

See the full definition of digital workplace

intranet is a term used with abundance whenever the subject of internal communication and collaboration is brought up which makes defining it a bit challenging. In its simplest form, an intranet is an internal website for your organization. It is used mainly for top-down communication where employees can access corporate news, policies and announcements.

 

See the full definition of intranet

Collaboration is “the situation of two or more people working together to create or achieve the same thing”.

 
 

See the full definition of collaboration

Here are some definitions of digital workplace:

 

  • Team collaboration
  • Cross-departmental and interdisciplinary collaboration
  • Community collaboration
  • Strategic partnerships and alliances
  • Supply chain collaboration

 

Find out the different types of collaboration in business

To gather a thorough understanding of intranets and their different types, let’s walk through its history from the early days up to now:

 
  1. Intranet Portals
  2. Enterprise Social Netwrok (ESN)
  3. Intranet 2.0
 

Find out the different types of intranet solutions

The main difference between intranets and extranets lays in the target audience. Intranets typically target users from a specific organization whereas extranets is the hub that can group users from multiple external organizations ranging from partners and suppliers all the way to clients

 

Discover the real difference between intranet and extranet

Different types of Intranet solutions from the early days up to the intranet 2.0 (commonly referred to as digital workplace solutions) bring a host of benefits to businesses of all sizes and industries. Below is a list of benefits often associated with intranets:

 
  1. Streamline internal communications
  2. Connect employees and eliminate silos
  3. Foster collaboration
  4. Improve knowledge sharing
  5. Recognize and reward employees
 

Find out teh benefits of intranet solutions

Here are three different strategies for a successful intranet adoption:

 
  1. User focus strategy
  2. Global community management strategy
  3. Private communities focus strategy
 

Which intranet adoption strategy should you choose?

4.7/5 - (6 votes)
I am the Chief Executive Officer of eXo Platform (the open source digital workplace platform), a company that I co-founded while in college and that I came back to after several years in the banking and consulting industry. I blog about modern work, about open-source and sovereignty issues. Occasionally, I also blog about my personal areas of interest, such as personal development, work–life balance, sustainability and gender equality.
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