🛑 STOP: Before reading this article, please be aware that Meta/Facebook Workplace is closing and will shortly migrate to Workvivo by Zoom. To find out more, please read our blog, Transition from Workplace to Workvivo: A Guide for Workplace Users
Justifying your business case to stakeholders needs quantitative metrics on the benefits of using the platform – Generation Digital gives you the tool to do so.
Organisations are now placing greater emphasis on employee engagement and satisfaction. To do that, they need a tool to act as the ‘glue’ between multiple systems that is intuitive, user friendly and can drive connections to colleagues that did not exist before.
Since its inception in 2016, Workplace by Facebook has been completely focused on achieving this. The team have shipped hundreds of new features in an evolutionary model that has driven adoption and value recognition as a world leading collaboration platform.
More recently, Workplace recognised that winning the business case was extremely important. As such, they commissioned Forrester[1] to conduct a Total Economic Impact Report to measure the benefits of using the platform.
In response to this, Generation Digital wanted to take the findings of the report and enable prospective and existing clients to make the findings of the report as well a number of additional factors accessible to form an indicative Return on Investment (ROI).
Why was making the ROI calculator important?
The journey for some clients to justify to senior stakeholders why the adoption of a collaboration platform can be hard, especially when considering that it may be funded across multiple budget lines. To make that case to be not just beneficial, but essential, there are many factors that derive benefit that previously were measured qualitatively rather than quantitatively.
For example, the report found that:
- Using Workplace delivered an average 10% increase in revenue;
- Costs for leadership communications were reduced by 25%;
- Efficiencies in training costs were measured at 18%;
- OPEX could be reduced by up to 80%; and
- Employee retention improved by 10%.
Therefore, it is hardly surprising why Generation Digital, as a Workplace Partner, saw this as an important tool to create.
Taking the calculations from the report as well as adding additional ones (e.g. Email Data Storage cost avoidance) from our experience as a trusted delivery and managed service partner of Workplace, we have created a comprehensive yet easy to use ROI calculator.
Why this tool proves working with a partner is essential
Workplace have already shown that they are seeking a partner-first model, especially for Mid-Market sized organisations. The Forrester report demonstrates clearly that the organisations that adopt Workplace mature rapidly and quickly seek further and more complex integrations, managed service support and differentiated services such as Executive Engagement Support, Videography & Content Creation support as well as Bots.
Partners are the route to achieving these enhancements to unlock the additional significant business benefits with ROI increasing from an average of 4x to up to as much as 15x through cost avoidance and productivity enhancements.
Workplace have said that they do not seek to do these additional services so they can concentrate on continuous improvement to the platform and encourage partners to deliver these complimentary services.
Further, in the pre-launch and launch phases of your deployment, partners can significantly de-risk delivery and help maximise adoption in order to maintain the integrity of the business case
Summary
The Forrester TEI Report for Workplace has demonstrated the rapid maturation of the service and the platform that Facebook have created. It also shows the increased commitment to partner-led delivery and support models to deliver maximum value. The missing piece is creating the Outline Business Case (OBC) and then the Full Business Case (FBC) with compelling, quantitative metrics. The Generation Digital ROI Calculator starts that journey to create the OBC and can rapidly provide the in-depth data for the FBC.
If you would like to see the ROI Calculator, please follow this link: https://www.gend.co/workplace-by-facebook-roi-calculator
You can also see our video on this topic on our YouTube Channel and watch our regular update show, What’s Up Workplace! : https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9C2DijhE1HbQFJajOgyIAAZMilIU9hBf
[1] Forrester Total Economic ImpactTM Study Commissioned By Workplace by Facebook, July 2019