Metrics and KM brought up the issue of Metrics and ROI around Knowledge Management initiatives, and while we all know that a large percentage of knowledge management activities do not find their way to an online platform it is just as important to track those that do.

I'm putting together a couple of posts that will talk about how you can justify investing in a content management system and the ROI tools are just some of the mechanisms you can use to demonstrate value to your leadership team (back to numbers again).

If you've already reached that stage of implementing a content management system but don't know where to start when it comes to measuring ROI on it there is an answer to your problems.

ROI calculators for such types of applications have been created after doing a number of in-depth studies of the benefits of using such applications within organizations. These benefits were then given dollar values and grouped together in what seems to be a rather complex looking worksheet that allows you to roughly estimate your applications ROI after keying in certain information.

While these tools are not known to be extremely accurate given how differently each organization uses their CM systems it does act as a stepping stone to gaining a better understanding of you can use metrics to demonstrate ROI.

One such ROI calculator i came across was from Alinean i have toyed around with their Microsoft Sharepoint 2007 ROI calculator and found that it’s actually pretty good. So if you are looking to get a rough idea on how much your new application might end up saving you I’d advise you to check it out.