Wednesday 31 January 2018

Quantified KM value story number 119 - finding knowledge at Accenture

One of the ways in which KM adds value is through helping people do work faster and better.  Here is a story of howAccenture estimated that value.


Accenture make documented knowledge available to their staff through a portal known as KX. IN order to estimate the value delivered through KM they decided to focus on one component of Knowledge Management –the use of KX - and to focus on one single benefit - the savings in time delivered through the use of knowledge gained through the KX portal.

They estimated these savings through a survey, which asked the following question

"Please estimate the amount of your time that you saved during the last two weeks as a result of this knowledge.
"During the last 2 weeks, this information saved me AT LEAST:"
"During the last 2 weeks, this information saved me AT MOST:"
The results from this survey were used to calculate average time savings, and thus average cost savings.  They found that for annual KX costs to the sample population of $170,000 they were delivering savings of $2,400,000.

This equates to a 2500 percent Return on Investment

2 comments:

jackvinson said...

Nick, while the numbers are impressive, what do they mean? Along with the faster access to the right information, have they seen corresponding improvements in customer (client) service? retention? Can they attribute the benefits of KX to some of the business challenges they had/have?

Nick Milton said...

Hi Jack

These metrics measure efficiency rather than effectiveness. Maybe that's what they wanted to impact? Or maybe that was easier to measure.

I can't comment whether they have also seen effectiveness benefits, as I dont think they have ever done that study (or if they have, I haven't seen it published).

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